Hope
by Aldara Gaea
Summary: The story of how Alice Cullen came into being. Her life before immortality, the institute, her change and her quest to find Jasper and the Cullens. Please review if you want me to continue--rated for mild mature themes and mild violence in future chapters
1. Preface

**A/N** -_ Hi everyone. This is my attempt at filling the blanks in our knowledge of Alice's past history. I find her such an intrigueing character, and I wanted to see if I could figure out how she came to be the amazing Alice that Bella comes to know. I'm not sure how well this'll be recieved, so I'm just posting this preface and the first chapter for now and I'll decide whether to keep going judging on the response I get._

_So, if you like this, and think that you'd like to keep reading, you're going to have to review and let me know that! I've enjoyed writing this much, but it's not half as fun if I don't know that there's people counting on me to know what happens next!_

Also: I regret to inform you that I do not, in fact, own any of the Twilight books or characters. So, anything familiar in here is, sadly, not mine. I'm very glad that Stephenie Meyer is so willing to let me play with her creations, however. :D

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_**Alice**_

**Preface**

I don't know how long I've been like this. For as long as I can remember I've had these premonitions, these visions. The very first is etched, with crystal clarity, into my perfect memory. My first of many.

_His face—cold, pale and hauntingly beautiful—gazes up at the stars, his expression serene. My heart breaks with yearning._

"_Jasper?" an unseen musical voice—_my voice?—_whispers, and his eyes are suddenly visible. Soulful golden eyes. He already knows; those eyes can see everything. "I love you."_

_Stars sparkle to life in those eyes. There is a whole universe of them, swirling around, dancing with light. I already know too, but I wait breathlessly._

"_I love you too, Alice."_

Before that, there is nothing. Only blackness. I don't know what it means, but I have discovered that it is not normal. I am not normal. I don't fit in—will I ever fit in?

My visions say yes. I've seen others too—others with golden eyes and peaceful faces—and I have seen Jasper and I with them. Laughing, hunting animals, flying effortlessly through rain-soaked forests... all together. I know each of their faces, their personalities, the tones of their voices. They call out to me:

"_Alice..."_

Is that even my name? Could this vision of perfect harmony truly exist somewhere, in the sands of time, waiting for me? I must believe it is. It is the only thing that drives me on... apart from him.

Where is Jasper? I have been searching for so long... what if I never find him? But I must not lose faith. I will search for him forever if I have to—I have that long. With him, forever is nothing; and without him, I am nothing. Only with Jasper will I have a real life. I need him to be complete.

I must believe it is real. But how much longer must I search...?

-

Don't forget to review if you want more!


	2. Chapter 1: 1910 to 1918

**A/N** - _Ok, just a heads up. I like to keep in canon with the books, coz I'm a facts kinda gal. However, I'm straying slightly from the timeline which has been drawn out for us by the amazing people over at Twilight Lexicon. You see, I did some research, and SM was just a little bit off about when they used shock-therepy for psych patients. Not a big deal, but as I said, I like facts. And I think it works out better, anyway. So, yeah. I hope you enjoy this--please review to let me know!_

_And the disclaimer I said before applies to this entire fic. I'm not gonna bore you by repeating it every chapter, I'm sure you know the drill :P_

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The first time Peter and Charlotte Brandon really noticed something strange about their daughter, she was four years old, and Peter was leaving for work. As Peter kissed his wife on the cheek and ruffled Mary Alice's straight, jet black hair, the little girl handed him his battered umbrella. He looked at the perfect blue sky outside and laughed.

"Not today, Lissy," he chuckled and pointed. "There ain't any clouds."

His little girl shook her head and insistently pushed the heavy wooden handle into his hands.

"Big rain, Dadda," she told him seriously. "You get vewy wet."

Peter took the umbrella out of her clutches and laughed indulgently. How could he refuse that face? And so, using the umbrella for a walking stick, he headed out to the docks. He swung the umbrella around in a circle as he reached the front gate, and smiled when he heard Mary Alice's delighted giggle.

The incident of the umbrella didn't cross his mind again, as he hauled lines and stacked crates, until a few hours before finishing time. As he paused to light a cigarette, he looked up at the sky. A dark bank of clouds loomed over the ocean, and he could see them rolling closer as he watched.

By the time he knocked off, the clouds were thick overhead. The rain followed with a vengeance, after Peter had only walked a block. As he shook out the umbrella that Mary Alice had so insistently given him, a peculiar half-chuckle escaped him.

At the house, Mary Alice sat in the small sitting room playing with her well-loved doll. Charlotte watched the storm roll in and remembered her daughter's behaviour that morning nervously. When the rain came, she stared out the kitchen window for a long moment as it ricocheted off the glass, unable to shake the strange dread that had settled in her stomach.

"How'd you know the storm was coming, Mary Alice?" she finally asked, turning to watch the little girl play mother on the bare wooden floor.

Mary Alice shrugged without looking up. "I just knowed," she replied.

Her serene confidence sent a shiver of fear down Charlotte's spine. But surely it was a coincidence? Mary Alice was just a little girl, she must've been playing pretend and made a lucky guess.

The little girl stopped moving, her face briefly vacant, before her head abruptly snapped up to look at the front door, a wide smile on her face.

"Dadda's comin'," she laughed, jumping to her feet.

The doll lay, forgotten, on the floor as she skipped out into the hall. Something bordering on disgust lined Charlotte's mouth, a bitter taste on her tongue, and she prayed that the door would not open just yet.

Heavy footsteps mounted the steps outside, replaced by the flapping of an umbrella, before the door swung on its hinge. Mary Alice's brilliant smile faded a moment before Peter stepped into the house. He did not greet his welcomer in his usual way—swooping down to envelope her in an affectionate hug and exclaiming how much he had missed her. Instead, he looked at her with wide eyes, then looked up to find Charlotte's face.

His eyes were steady, as though he could see the suspicions forming in her mind and was trying to ease her mind. But, despite the intent behind his mild laugh and decidedly unconcerned smile, the look had the effect of a verdict for Charlotte.

"A pretty trick," Peter murmured, patting Mary Alice on the head and closing the door with his foot. He continued to gaze at his wife, determined to laugh it off as a coincidence; the lucky guess of their over imaginative four-year-old daughter.

But Charlotte wasn't so sure...

-

It didn't take Mary Alice very long to realise that there were many things which she knew that she shouldn't yet. At first, she couldn't understand her mother and father's reactions whenever she acted on that other instinct. Wasn't she being helpful?

As she grew older she realised that the brief flashes of insight, which she simply referred to as knowing, were not normal. And because it was not normal, it unnerved others. Especially her parents. She didn't like that awful look on Mamma's lovely face, almost as though she were scared, or Dadda's peculiar half-chuckle, which seemed to mock the carefree laughter that she loved so much to hear. So she played pretend—it was more fun like that anyway—and, over time, they seemed to relax.

But pretending didn't mean that Mary Alice didn't know.

They were only little things—usually the day's weather—flashes of things that didn't really matter would jump into her head and she knew them. The older she got, and the more she understood about the world around her, the easier it was to know and understand more interesting things. The meal Mamma was likely to cook for dinner that night, the colour of Mrs Brady's new dress, the price of fish at her mother's favourite dockside market.

She knew the exact day that Mamma realised that she was pregnant with Cynthia. There hadn't been much, it had come in pieces throughout the day—_the familiar impression of her mother... a swollen stomach... the wail of a baby... and an intense rush of excitement._ But it hadn't been difficult to put it all together.

Though she knew that she couldn't say anything, Mary Alice could barely contain her excitement. She tried hard not to act too strange but, in the week that followed, she sometimes thought she saw the ghost of that frightened look in the corners of Mamma's eyes when she looked at her. It was a long week.

Finally the day came. Dadda knocked on the door of her room lightly and Mary Alice couldn't stop the wide grin that stretched across her face as he and her mother walked in. They sat together on the edge of her small bed and she faced them on the floor, cross-legged with her half-dressed doll in her lap.

"Lissy, Mamma and I have very exciting news," Dadda started.

Mary Alice almost giggled at his tone; he sounded worried. Grown-ups could be very strange about things like babies, she knew, so she reminded herself not to ruin the moment for them.

"What is it, Dadda?" she pushed him continue when he paused.

"I'm pregnant, Mary Alice," Mamma filled in, sounding amazed. "I'm gonna have a baby."

"Really?" Mary Alice squealed instantly and jumped to her feet, finally allowed to let loose the ecstatic sound. "I'm gonna have a little sister?"

Her mother's grey-blue eyes suddenly snapped away from the dreamland she'd been in and focussed on Mary Alice's small face. That almost forgotten grimace crinkled Charlotte's face, but Peter laughed and tugged his daughter's slim form into his lap. It wasn't that mockery chuckle—it had been a long time since Peter had last thought of the strange suspicions he and Charlotte had once possessed—so Mary Alice giggled with him.

"We can't know that yet, Lissy," he explained, as though she simply hadn't understood them properly. "It could be a boy. Don' chou think a li'l brother could be just as fine as a li'l sister?"

"'Course," Mary Alice was quick to assure him. It was pointless to wonder, though—she already knew it was a girl. But they'd find out when they were ready, and she was happy to let them wait.

"This baby'll mean some things'll change though," her father continued, stroking her long black hair all the way down to the ends at her waist.

Mary Alice took her mother's hand from her knee so that she wouldn't feel left out. She sometimes suspected that Mamma was just a little jealous of the attention Dadda liked to devote to their daughter.

"When the baby's older, you'll have to share this room."

Mary Alice looked around her small room, the only bedroom other than her parents', and imagined a cot in the corner with her new baby sister sleeping peacefully. An intense wave of excitement swept over her and she bounced in her father's lap.

"Mamma and I'll be very busy looking after the baby and you'll have to be extra careful of your p's and q's. But you aughta know that, even if we don't have s' much time for you, we still love you an awful lot."

"I know Dadda," she told him, sincerely. "I love you very much too. I love Mamma very much. And I _love_ my baby sister."

Mamma's grimace deepened, and Dadda noticed this time. It reminded him of forgotten conversations, but he wasn't too worried. His indulgent chuckle only had a minute part of the mockery one in it. He squeezed Mary Alice in a hug, then eased her off his lap. She sat back down on the smudged rug and finished dressing her doll in it's baby clothes.

"Rock-a-bye baby, in the tree tops. When the wind blows the cradle will rock…." she sang as she cradled the doll in her arms, imagining that it was her new baby sister. She hadn't been allowed to play this game until her parents actually told her the news.

Dadda helped Mamma out of the room, one hand resting comfortingly on the small of her back. Mary Alice watched them through her eyelashes, still singing. "When the bower breaks, the cradle will fall...."

"It's just not right, Peter," she heard her mother whisper as they moved out of sight. "She's not right in the head, our child—what'ld the neighbours say?"

"...Then down will come baby..."

"Now, now, Charlotte, don't be sucha dill," her father soothed. "She's just got herself an imagination, that's all. What little girl wouldn't reckon that she's getting a baby sister?"

"... cradle and all."

-

Eight months later, after watching in amazement as Mamma's stomach grew bigger and rounder, Cynthia was born. The day was a little scary for Mary Alice—she was playing on the old swing in the back garden when she suddenly doubled over from an awful pain in her stomach.

A minute later, her mother cried out loudly. Mary Alice rushed inside, just in time to see her frantic father rush out the front door. He returned shortly with a flustered Mrs Brady from across the street. She was a chubby lady, in the later years of her life, with mousey grey-shot hair and rosy cheeks that dimpled when she smiled.

"Oh... she needs to get to the hospital quickly," she twittered upon entering the room, and helped Peter to raise his wife to her feet.

Mary Alice stood quietly by the door now, watching with fascinated but calm, wide eyes. There was a grimace of pain on Mamma's face and she had begun to pant heavily, her distended midsection so round it looked like it would pop. Mary Alice heard the rattle of Mr Brady's black Rambler pulling up outside and her mother cried out again.

"Don't fret, Charlotte, dear," Mrs Brady cooed. "Mr Brady'll have you safely in Dr Cosway's care in no time."

Once Mamma had been arranged as comfortably as possible on the puckered leather of the car's back seat, Dadda threw closed the door and Mr Brady coaxed the engine to a loud snarl. Mrs Brady put her arm around Mary Alice's thin shoulders as the car puttered steadily down the street.

"She'll be fine, pet" she said, obviously mistaking the girl's unnatural quiet for distress rather than fascination. "The baby's a-coming now, that's all, and you'll see them both in a week, I'd wager."

Mary Alice smiled up at her, happiness making her feel like her heart would burst if she did not let it out. "I know Mrs Brady. Cynthia'll be the best li'l sister in the whole wide world!"

Naturally, Mary Alice already knew the baby's name. She had overheard her parents as they mulled over possibilities late one night, and as soon as she'd heard it she'd known. She was a girl and she would be called Cynthia. It was a pretty name, and Mary Alice had quickly decided that it would match her pretty pink face.

"Cynthia?" Mrs Brady asked, closing the front door with a curious expression on her face. "Charlotte didn't mention to me that she'd decided on the names."

Mary Alice felt her heart sink. Her mother's words from eight months ago echoed dimly in her mind now—_what would the neighbours say?—_and realised that she had said too much in her excitement. She shrugged and smiled sweetly, giving her best innocent eyes, and that seemed to ease Mrs Brady's mind. She patted the girl's hair affectionately.

"O' course you want a little sister, but don't be too out of sorts if she's a brother instead, sweetie," she fussed. "What boy name d'you like? Did Mother and Father say what they'd call him if it's a boy?"

Mary Alice shrugged again and turned to go to her room. She'd heard them too, but she wasn't interested in boy's names. But Mrs Brady waved her back.

"Now, now pet," she chided gently. "No need to sulk, I'm just saying that you oughtn't get your hopes up too high. Wouldn't want to see you disappointed when Mother brings home a little Colin or Charlie instead."

"I won't be disappointed," Mary Alice promised, mentally adding because she knew that she was right, and the older lady finally let the matter drop.

Mrs Brady helped the young girl put a few things in a small travel case—several changes of clothes, a hair comb and her doll, with a few of her dresses too—fussing over the small pile until each item sat just so. Mary Alice would be staying with the Bradys while both of her parents were at the hospital.

The house looked lonely to Mary Alice as Mrs Brady shut the front door behind them and guided her across the paved street to the immaculate front garden facing them. Mr Brady clanked to a stop as Mary Alice struggled to keep the carry case of belongings off the rough stones of the front path. She didn't struggle long; Mrs Brady took the case out of her weaker hands kindly.

"Off you hop, poppet, I'll take that."

-

Once again--review if you want me to go on.


	3. Chapter 2: May to July 1918

**A/N--**_So, I haven't exactly gotten very many reviews for this story. I'm a bit disappointed about that. But I'm gonna keep posting anyway. The posts will be pretty far in between, because I've got Uni and stuff to do as well as write. Having an actual life is a curse sometimes, lol. _

_If you enjoy this--please, PLEASE tell me. Or, even if you hate it. I know that there are people reading this, so you can't hide from me!_

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Things did change with Cynthia around, just as Dadda had said. At first, they were good changes and Mary Alice was happy.

Baby Cynthia was just as pretty as Mary Alice knew she would be—her big eyes were a shocking electric blue and the wispy hair that sprouted from her tiny head was dark, already beginning to curl gently against her delicate scalp. Mary Alice was sure that it would be just as black as hers and her mother's.

When Cynthia smiled, Mary Alice felt like it made the sun shine just that little bit brighter for the rest of the day. She loved to play peek-a-boo the best; it didn't matter how many times they poked their faces out at her from behind their hands, her delighted giggles made Mary Alice laugh until she could cry.

And when Dadda came home from the docks, he would swoop into the room, snatch Cynthia up from her bouncer and snuggle her close into his chest. Then Mamma would leave the kitchen and wrap her arms around her husband's waist, her head resting on his shoulder as they both gazed with open wonder at their perfect baby girl.

Mary Alice never felt jealous—though she sometimes felt forgotten, especially by her mother—for they all basked in the glow that radiated from her sister's tiny body. The peaceful smiles on her parent's faces made her feel happier than she had ever felt in her entire life. And she soon had an entire summer to enjoy it.

But the good things didn't last very long.

oOo

One night, barely three months after Cynthia was born, Mary Alice tossed sleeplessly in her small bed. It was a hot night, and the summer air was stifling. Her white cotton nightgown clung to her skin uncomfortably and her restlessness had the covers bunched in a hard pile at the end of her bed.

Eventually, long after the comforting murmur of her parents' voices had evaporated into the humid night air, she fell asleep, though she was unaware of when the oppressive silence had tipped her over that long-elusive edge.

Waking up was another matter.

With a strangled cry, she sat bolt upright in her bed. The air was chilled now, bitingly cold against her sweaty skin. Clumps of her long black hair clung to her her face and neck, her legs were tangled in the bedsheets. Choking sobs racked her chest. Cynthia began to wail.

It had become Mary Alice's job to soothe her baby sister when she woke in the night—lull her back to sleep with a song so that her parents needn't get up—but she did nothing now. She could not move. She stared straight ahead, eyes opened wide with horror. Completely oblivious to her surroundings.

She barely heard the thump of bare feet on the floor boards or the creak of the bedroom door over the painful ring of dread in her ears. A pair of strong arms gathered her into a warm chest.

"Mary Alice, sweetheart, what's wrong?" her father's urgent voice sounded far away. "Hush, husshhh... what's the matter?"

Her mother was there too, making soothing noises, but not as loudly. Another voice almost drowned her out.

"No, no, no, no, no, no..." it moaned. "Make it stop! Go away! Let me help! No, no, no, no...!"

"It's aright, sweetheart... husshhhh, tell me what happened," her father spoke again, battling with the third voice for dominance. Suddenly, Mary Alice realised why that voice wailed so loudly in her ears.

It was hers.

Awareness jolted abruptly through her. Her father was holding her tight in his arms, rocking her back and forth as his rough hands gently smoothed her hair. And Mary Alice was staring blankly into his bare shoulder, her mouth still moving of its own accord against the fuzzy hairs.

Her mother's voice was no longer audible—she had taken Cynthia away from the racket. Mary Alice and her father were alone in the early-morning dimness of her room. He continued to rock her back and forth.

She worked to stop her crying, her father murmuring assurances the whole time. It was surprisingly difficult to regain control of her lips, even more difficult to quiet her vocal cords. But she did it.

Dadda hugged her closer for a moment, then pushed her back slightly to see her face. Though she tried, she just couldn't remove the expression of sheer horror. He kissed her forehead and brushed the clinging hairs off her face.

"You a'right now, Lissy?"

Mary Alice opened her mouth to answer him, but the words stuck in her throat. She struggled to swallow, gasped in a shuddering breath and tried again.

"I... I saw..." she shuddered and buried her face in his shoulder again. Tears and crying were lost to her now. There was no way to release the pressure that was building in her chest.

Her father stroked her hair again. "Was it a bad dream?"

She shook her head violently. Whatever it had been, she was certain that it was not just a dream. No mere nightmare could compare to what she had seen. He pushed her gently back again.

"What then, Lissy?"

He needed to know—she had to warn him. She didn't want any of it to happen, it must be stopped. But she didn't want to tell him either; to hear that mockery of her father's laugh, or see the wary grimace on her mother's face.

Yet the horror of it all still stood before her eyes like a filthy veil; her father's face looked wan, sickly in the light of her knowledge. She couldn't let it get him.

"I s-saw... death."

His face went blank with shock. Refusing to believe. "What d'you mean?"

Mary Alice trembled, trying to press past the sickening images that had scratched themselves into her brain. Surely it was not real? But the pressure was too great, and she spewed it out in a torrent of words.

"P-people screaming... hurting. Fire in-inside them, killing them."

He struggled with her answer for an excruciating moment. He didn't want to believe her. She could see it in his eyes—he was trying to explain it away to himself. The fevered imaginings of his over-imaginative child, a creeping phantom of the night. Not real.

"It's coming, Dadda," she plead, desperate to make him see. It was important that he knew what she knew this time. This was vital. "Just like when Molly lost her doll, and the big ship that came, and Cynthia. I saw, I _know_."

Then she watched, with even greater terror, as the curtain pulled across his eyes. His expression turned cold and he slid her carefully out of his lap, as though she were suddenly diseased. The pressure—which had briefly fled in her moment of revelation—slammed back again in full force, even more suffocating than before. Coughing sobs started ripping into her chest again, but her father made no move to comfort her this time.

She was beyond help.

And over his shoulder she could see the only window in the room. Thick, black storm clouds pressed down, like the weight on her chest, as the sun struggled to rise above the horizon. It's bleak light reflected an alarming red off those clouds—nature's warning that only she could see.

The sky looked like it had been smeared with blood.

oOo

Peter had left her then, alone in her room, his face devoid of all emotion. All of her life he had been able to shrug off her bizarrely accurate predictions as coincidences, but no longer. This was too disturbing to laugh off—too frightening if she was right—and so he had ignored it.

She knew that he hadn't told her mother, at least; she overheard him in the corridor as he woodenly reassured his wife that it had just been a vivid nightmare. But Charlotte hadn't treated her eldest daughter the same way since. Cynthia no longer slept in her cot in the corner of Mary Alice's room.

So Mary Alice had been left to pick up the pieces of her shattered innocence alone. The growing light of day had done nothing to dispel the heavy sense of helplessness that weighed her down. She tried to reason with herself—convince herself that it was just as her father had told her mother: just a nightmare. But she knew what she had seen, and she knew that she had to do something about it.

_People—who I know and love—scream in pain, sweat pouring down their contorted faces. Bodies burning up inside. Cracked blue lips move wordlessly; thick tongues sticking in their throats. Silently begging for it to stop. _

Save us,_ most plead,_ don't let us die.

_But I am helpless. _

Then kill us quickly,_ but I can't help. Face after face, one tortured soul after another, in an endless, helpless mess. Piles of bodies and mounds of dirt, and always the scorching flames blistering inside pasty skin... and I can do nothing as they waste away._

_So I scream._

Every night she saw this—again and again, night after night. Mary Alice tried to avoid it, cowering in the corner of her bed until she could no longer keep sleep away. She felt tired all of the time, the night robbed of its restfulness, and dark circles formed under her eyes. But her exhaustion had no effect on her determination to save her town from the horrible disease that she saw ravaging them.

Unlike the other visions, though, her efforts to change this one had no effect. And that scared her, even more than the other differences. They were frightening enough:

This was the first time Mary Alice had had more than feelings—more than the simple flash of a colour, an emotion, a single blurry image, a sound. For the first time, the pictures moved. There was deafening sounds and blinding colours. And the unwavering clarity scared her the most, as it seemed to mean that this was out of her power to prevent.

This was unavoidable.

But her own mother would not even look at her any more. She wouldn't let her touch little Cynthia, even when she wriggled and screamed and reached out for her. And her father's good-natured smile was gone; his eyes no longer sparkled as they crinkled up at the corners in laughter.

What could she do to make them listen?


	4. Chapter 3: August 1918

**A/N-**_ Wow. Thank-you all SOOOO much, to everyone who actually reviewed after I posted the last chapter. It was a very pleasant surprise to open my email and find a nice little pile of reviews waiting for me to read them! And because so many of you asked me to update quickly (and because I had this chapter already completed, lol) I've decided to give you an early update. I won't usually update so fast, but as I said, I already had it written so I thought why not?_

_Again, to those of you who are reading and haven't reviewed (and those of you who have as well :P) - Please do! If you want to keep reading, I have to know that there actually ARE people who are reading. And I love any suggestions you may have for things to include in the story later on._

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Mary Alice tried everything she could think of to warn people.

It was obviously useless for her to try to convince her parents; they couldn't really do anything even if they would believe her. And, though it was plain to everyone that there was something bothering her, her parents' coldness made Mary Alice frightened to say what.

After a week of quietly suffering the torturous nights alone, she decided to take matters into her own hands. Curtly released from yet another excruciatingly silent breakfast, Mary Alice headed straight for the Police Station in town. In her scared and lonely state, it seemed like a sensible place to start.

But when she stood at the high counter, her neck craned at an uncomfortable angle, and solemnly told the policeman what she knew was coming, all he did was laugh. With nothing else to do, she persisted. After the third day, he allowed her to laboriously fill in an official form of concern, but he had the air of an adult who is indulging in a silly child's persistent whim. And, when she went back to see how they had decided to act on her information, she was severely disappointed at their lack of interest.

Refusing to accept defeat, she wrote letters.

Mary Alice filled page after page with her tidiest twelve-year-old scrawl, a dictionary at the ready to prevent as many spelling errors as possible. _To the Editor of the Biloxi Sun Herald, dear Doctor Cosway; to the Chief of Police, dear Mr Mayor—to dear Anyone Who Can Help Me..._ but it was useless.

She waited impatiently for replies which never came.

oOo

Then, one afternoon, as Mary Alice walked home from school alone, a new and brilliant idea occurred to her.

In assembly that day, the pastor had been talking about faith. Like most of the other young girls, Mary Alice wasn't normally very interested in what the stuffy paster had to say, but one small scripture had captured her interest enough for her to pay attention. She continued to dwell on it long afterwards.

"And Paul, in the book of Hebrews, tells us, 'By faith Noah, being warned of God of things not seen as yet,'" Mary Alice's ears had pricked up at the words, "'moved with fear, prepared an ark to the saving of his house; by the which he condemned the world, and became heir of the righteousness which is by faith.' Now, my children..."

Without realising it, Father Joseph had given Mary Alice just the hope for which she had been searching for so long. But it was not the hope instilled by new-found faith, as he had intended, rather a raging, dangerous hope inspired by desperation.

As she walked to two miles between Sacred Heart Academy and her home near the docks, where her father worked, her mind was in a flurry of thought over that small scripture.

_... being warned of God of things not seen as yet..._ Didn't they always say God talked to people in dreams? Suppose Noah had had a dream too... _by faith Noah moved with fear.... _She knew the terror that came with the knowledge of looming death—but could it really be fear inspired of God?

Though her intense fear of what she knew was about to happen had driven her find some way of warning everyone, it had never occurred to her that she had been given the knowledge from God. Neither of her parents were very religious, so her only exposure to anything concerning the divine had been through her school.

But now that the idea had been planted, she was convinced—perhaps she had been chosen to know things other people didn't so that she could save them. God wanted her to warn the people before he was forced to punish them, just like with Noah.

Which meant that she had been going about telling people all the wrong way. For, if she was being warned by God, who better to ask to help her save the screaming people than the church?

Mary Alice smiled a ghostly smile, looked up at the crisp blue sky and, for the first time in weeks, could acknowledge the bright beauty of the shining sun. A haunting sense of rightness settled over her—not quite hope, or peace, but a reluctant end to the ripping chaos of the unknown. This was what she was supposed to do and she was no longer afraid of what would come; whatever it was, it was meant to be.

She was nearing the docks now, and the street grew more crowded. As she passed, she felt the disapproving stares following her. She wondered if this was what Noah had felt in the time it took him to build the ark before the flood came. Had he, too, been rejected? She couldn't recall the details of the story well enough to remember. But the final words of Father Joseph's sermon comforted her. _And so, my children, we must have faith if we are to be saved. Faith in the unseen will strengthen us in God and only then are we able to stand against the wickedness of the devil._

Her path was set. Tomorrow she would talk to Sister Elspeth—a kindly old sister who taught Etiquette—and she would have the church stand behind her. The people in her dreams wouldn't have to scream any longer.

Mary Alice liked Sister Elspeth; her softly wrinkled skin was powder pale, her silver hair wispy and there was a constant smile twinkling in the corners of her periwinkle blue eyes. The strangeness which made most people distrust Mary Alice seemed to have little effect on Sister Elspeth: the old nun often called on her to give demonstrations of proper posture, or graceful walking in class. So Mary Alice was sure that she could rely on Sister Elspeth—she would be able to tell her exactly who could help ensure that their town stayed safe.

A small cloud skittered across the sky, just as Mary Alice reached her front door, briefly blocking the sunlight before the high breeze brushed it away again. But in the sudden shade, Mary Alice shivered. The debilitating terror was gone, but the sickening sense of inevitability would not be removed; it clung to the pit of her stomach and back of her neck like barnacles on a ship.

_Tomorrow_, she reminded herself stubbornly as she moved into the house, _tomorrow will change everything._

oOo

The dream came again that night, just as it had every other, but it had changed now.

_The frantic movement of their cracked lips no longer call for my help. They damn me; spit accusations and curses. _Devil child_, they shriek, _be cursed as you have cursed us. _They gnash their teeth, not in pain but out of spite._

And another vision had joined the first, almost more horrifying.

_A thick darkness swallows me. Arms bound tightly to my sides; I can't move. Another dying face flashes—a shocking pain rips through my body. Searing white, like lightening. Different from the slow, blistering fire of the others._

You couldn't help them,_ is what this blinding pain says. _You have failed, and punishment follows.

_So I scream. Scream for the people who died. Scream for the torture of my own body. I scream and scream and scream... into indifferent nothingness..._

Mary Alice lurched upright in her bed. To stifle her unconscious screams, she had taken to sleeping with the corner of her blanket stuffed in her mouth. As she struggled to unclench her teeth, she felt as though something was clawing its way out of her stomach and she gagged. Finally, she managed to rip the rough cloth away and she threw up in her lap.

Her entire body trembled as she sat there, unable to remove herself from the putrid mess. The back of her throat burned and the smell had her dry retching. It had been so horrible; she didn't want to endure it any longer. She wished bitterly that God had chosen someone else to warn.

Eventually, the smell and the seeping wetness became too much to ignore and Mary Alice forced herself to move. She had to concentrate to keep control of her shaky limbs as she climbed, tortuously slowly, out of the bed and stripped the sheets from the mattress.

The night was too dark—the thin crescent of the moon obscured by a smoky curtain of clouds—and Mary Alice stumbled several times as she lugged her soiled bedding downstairs to the laundry room. She would have to leave them until the morning to wash them, and she thanked heaven that it was a Saturday. Mamma was disgusted enough with her without this too.

Mary Alice's arms continued to shake as she struggled to heave her armload into one of the large wooden vats full of water. The dream—vivid memory of agony—flashed through her and the sheets unwound from themselves, half of the wad falling on top of her again while the rest fell into the vat with a splash.

Choking sobs ripped open her chest again and tears streamed down her face. She crumpled to the floor and buried her face in her hands. _Please let this be over soon..._

oOo

Sunday morning found Mary Alice clean and tidy, her sheets back on her bed, having washed and dried them the day before. She sat on the floor in the middle of her room in her best dress. Her father had given it to her for her last birthday, back when her parents had loved her—when she was loveable.

She blinked wearily, then looked out the small window to watch the first rays of the day shoot into the sky. It was too early for her to be up, but Mary Alice couldn't sleep. At least the dreams would not need to come to her any more. Today she went to the church for help.

Her visit to Sister Elspeth the day before had not gone so well as she had hoped, but it didn't really matter. She knew what she had to do.

Again she felt the sinking feeling of rejection as she remembered what the eldest of the Mercy sisters had told her.

"_Put such wickedness out of your mind, mi puella. The devil uses divers ways to pervert the innocence of the virtuous. If you continue on this straying path, you will surely be thrown down into the hell-fire, where the Lord's mercy cannot reach you. Repent now, Miss Brandon, and be clean of this witchcraft."_

When Mary Alice had tried to object, to explain about Noah and how this was the same, Sister Elspeth had shaken her head, her kindly eyes sad but firm.

"No, puella—dear child. The Lord has stilled his voice now, he no longer needs to speak," she had said. "Especially not to young girls. I admire your fervour, but it is severe blasphemy. I cannot help you."

And with that, she had turned away. Mary Alice had walked back home again with a heavy heart. But her determination to gain support of the church was no less strong. Sister Elspeth was only a nun, after all, so what could she know about messages from God? Surely not as much as Father Joseph would.

Mary Alice heard Cynthia crying in the next room, heard the creaking of floorboards as her mother moved to comfort the baby. She wished her Mamma could comfort her now; whisper quiet words in her ear until the painful plague on her mind disappeared like smoke.

The cuckoo clock on the wall in the hallway chirped 8 o'clock and Mary Alice stood. She would have to leave now if she was to get to Mass on time.

Clouds, which had been hovering in the corners of the horizon as the sun rose, glorious and bright, had now crept out of the ocean to blanket most of the sky. As Mary Alice quietly closed the door behind herself and stepped down the front stairs, the bright new sun was engulfed.

Only a single ray was allowed escape, and its light was out of her reach.

* * *

_*Also--I've changed a couple of minor things in the previous chapters. I had to do a little bit of fiddling around with the timeline, so the dates in the chapter names are a little different. It's not really affecting the story that much but I just thought I'd give you the heads up anyway. _


	5. Chapter 4: August to September 1918

_**A/N --**So, here's the next chapter. I know it's been a while in coming, but I'm very busy at the moment. Anyway, I'm feeling generous today, and I'm procrastinating studying for a German exam I have on Monday. Hence--a post! Again, I'd like to point out that it's important to read the chater titles, as they will tell you when the story is taking place. Alice is only young, and as the story progresses, she gets more and more hazing about little matters like the passage of time._

_Also, thank-you so much to those of you who are reading this and have taken the time to leave me with a review. I know there are more of you out there who haven't bothered, and I would plead with you to please PLEASE review. Even (or especially) if there are things you find wrong with this story. I value every opinion--and I'm open to suggestions :D_

_Finally, I'd like to dedicate the end of this chapter to doreansmomma for her suggestion, which encouraged me to write a scene that I wasn't sure about including here._

* * *

The church building loomed above her, grey and imposing with its bell tower and dark stained glass windows. She imagined it would look very pretty in the sunlight. Adults milled around the double doors at the front, slowly making their way inside as they chatted quietly to each other.

Mary Alice moved through them with decisive steps, unabashedly holding her head high despite some of the less-than-welcoming looks directed toward her. A small sparrow amongst a flock of crows.

The vaulted cathedral ceiling inside made her feel very small as she made her way between the pews, row after row, to the very front. She took a seat on the hard wooden seat, jumping to manage the height, her short legs swinging four inches above the flagstone floor, and soon the meeting began.

Father Joseph was young for a pastor, Mary Alice thought. His face was barely lined, and he wasn't even grey-haired yet. But, as she listened as hard as she could to what he said, she thought she understood why he had been chosen.

He had an inspiring, but calming voice which she had never noticed during the school assemblies. Perhaps she'd just not been listening, for it was clear as day now. Yet somehow, his reassuring demeanour did nothing to release the dark pressure that had settled around Mary Alice's young heart.

She looked around at the other men and women in the building. It was a small congregation—looking all the smaller in the spacious chapel—though this was one of only a few churches in the whole of Biloxi. Most shipyardsmen had little use for God and churches, unless they needed something or cussing.

Not a few of these men and women were looking at her uneasily. She turned her attention back to Father Joseph.

Mary Alice recognised the passage of scriptures he was reading from, as he'd also spoken on this topic at school that week. It was from the book of Matthew, chapter 23—Father Joseph was, again, talking about heeding signs sent from God.

This was a sign itself; her heart began to pound and her blood raced through her veins. His voice grew in volume and fervour in her ears, until it filled her head.

"And I ask you brothers and sisters—if we do not let that most holy Lord gather us under his arms like a hen gathers her chicks, if we ignore the signs of warning which he has sent to us by his prophets—as Saint Matthew says, 'how can ye escape the damnation of hell?' I tell you now that you can not."

"That's right," Mary Alice suddenly scrambled to stand on her seat, certainty filling her. "Father Joseph speaks the truth. There is a bad, bad thing coming and everyone must listen to God's warnings before it is too late!"

Her shrill voice echoed in the vaults of the cathedral ceiling, jarring when it came back to her ears.

Every eye turned on her, a little girl standing alone on the front pew before the old wooden pulpit. Their cold stares cut off Mary Alice's excitement and she froze, unable to move as they muttered darkly to each other about her sudden outburst.

There was a gentle tug on her left arm.

"Come down, child," a kindly voice commanded. "Be a good girl, now, and let Father Joseph finish his sermon."

oOo

She managed to look away from the hard eyes and into Sister Elspeth's wrinkled old face. The little old lady pulled on her hand again and Mary Alice climbed down from the pew stiffly. With a little effort, she was able to shuffle her way after the nun, away from the disapproving congregation.

"But... Sister Elspeth you have to believe me. They're all going to get so sick—I don't want people to die. And it's coming for us all!" her quiet exclamation rang faintly in the dead silence.

"Hush, dear."

Sister Elspeth steered her into a cosy room, which resembled the combination of a sitting room and kitchen, and pushed her gently into a simple chair. Then, still holding her hand—almost as though to keep her in the room—she took a seat beside her on a low wooden stool.

Mary Alice felt numb. She could faintly hear Father Joseph apologising for her disruption.

"The child is unwell," he told them apologetically. "I pray you will not be alarmed by her words, she is just a young girl in need of help. As is fitting in followers of the most blessed Christ, it is required of us to exercise compassion and charity for those among us who are in such need. And now, let us sing..."

The organ wheezed to life with a flurry of notes, and Mary Alice tuned it out. Eventually, after the singing stopped and the sound of murmuring voices—they sounded ominous, like mourners at a funeral service—slowly disappeared, Father Joseph joined her and Sister Elspeth.

"So, you are Miss Mary Alice Brandon?"

Mary Alice nodded and Father Joseph smiled and patted her head before taking a seat next to her. She didn't like the undertone of his kindly actions. Patronising.

"Sister Elspeth told me of a very interesting conversation she had with you yesterday, Miss Brandon," he continued.

His voice was light, as though he were talking to a skittish animal. The old nun still clasped her hand tightly with gnarled fingers. Mary Alice could only nod again.

"She said that you... were sent a warning from God," he paused, watching her face intently. "Would you like to tell me about this warning?"

Her heart jumped again. He actually wanted to listen to her? Could it be possible that Father Joseph would actually be the one to believe her—would she now stop being plagued by her horrific nightmares? His face was carefully blank; she couldn't tell. But she was desperate to be heard.

"There's a sickness coming," she muttered, looking down at the flower pattern in her dress. "People will get very sick—their bodies start to burn up with a fever and they cough and wheeze and cry from the pain. And then..." she took a shuddering breath, "they die."

"And how do you know this, Miss Brandon?" he sounded truly concerned; the words came faster now.

"In... my head. I can't sleep any more, my head gets so full of their faces in the night when I close my eyes. So many dying faces... and they hate me because I knew... and I see it all and I know it's going to happen so soon."

A tear rolled down her cheek and she looked up into the pastor's eyes, beseeching.

"Please help me save them."

But there was no understanding in his face, only pity. The utter darkness squashed the last of her hope and filled her entire body as he rested his hand on her head and stood.

"I am sorry."

As he pulled her to her feet, his face turned suddenly ashy in her sight. Beads of sweat stood out on his pasty skin and a string of rosary beads rattled in his hand as he mouthed wordlessly. She cowered from the image, which did not go away when she closed her eyes to it, falling back into her chair.

"You too, Father," she moaned when he moved to help her back up. "It's coming for you too—please listen!"

"Come, child," he murmured gently, "I will take you home to your parents. You are not well."

There was no hope left for her, then. As she followed Father Joseph through the dusty halls outside, to where an automobile was tucked away in a shed, she could not find it within her to even cry any more.

Maybe she _was_ sick—she knew that what she was seeing was not normal. But she also knew, deep within her, that whether or not it was normal, it was still true. And it didn't matter, because nobody was listening. Mary Alice stared blankly out the window as they made their way slowly through town.

Father Joseph pulled the car up on the street in front of her house. The curtain in the front window shifted as someone looked out to see them getting out of the car. Her father stood warily in the door as they mounted the stairs. Mary Alice stared at her shoes in defeat.

"Father! Thank you for bringin' Mary Alice back—we didn't know where she'd wandered to," Peter reached out to pull his daughter inside the house. "We're terribly sorry if she was a'botherin' you, Father Joseph, it won't be happenin' again."

"It's quite alright, Mr Brandon. Your daughter's heart is in the right place."

Peter glanced down at Mary Alice suspiciously. It hurt.

"Actually, might I come in for a moment," Father Joseph continued. "I would like to speak to yourself and Mrs Brandon, if I may."

Her father nodded seriously, standing back from the door to allow the pastor into the house. He gave Mary Alice another stern look, which pierced her even deeper than the first. He had never used to look at her so coldly.

"Get to ya room Mary Alice," he commanded, watching carefully as she walked away. "Please, this way Father, make ye'self comfortable. Charlotte, would ya come 'ere?"

Mary Alice moved into her room slowly. She didn't know what to feel any more. Not bothering to shut the door, she just sat down on her neatly made bed with her legs curled into her chest. The adult's voices carried easily from the sitting room.

"I don't know if you are aware, Mr and Mrs Brandon, but your daughter appears to have a seriously troubled mind," Father Joseph was saying. She could imagine the grimaces on her parents' faces. "She came to mass this morning to warn the congregation about some sickness that she says is coming to kill everyone."

Her father sighed. "Yeah, she had a nightmare 'bout it a month'r'so ago, and she ain't been the same since."

"Yes... well she seems to have gotten it into her head that she's being warned by God. I know that neither of you have significant connections with the church, but I trust that you understand how great a blasphemy this is."

"Be 'sured, we'll do all we can to punish Mary Alice for bein' so disrespectful, Father. She'll not bother you again," Peter replied.

There was a pause.

"I beg your pardon, Mr Brandon, but I do not think that parental discipline is what your daughter is in need of."

"Really?" her father asked coldly. Her mother gasped.

"Do you think she's been possessed by some devil, Father?" she almost sounded hopeful. There was another short pause.

"No. Another man of the church might quite readily agree with you, Mrs Brandon, but I am far more current with modern technologies. I have a particular interest in medicine, and I think that your daughter is very ill."

"But there ain't nothing wrong with her," Charlotte objected, frustrated. "Ya don't think I checked?"

"It is not any sickness of the body, Mrs Brandon, but an illness of the mind. I believe your daughter is mentally unsound. I do not pretend to be an expert on such things—I am only a humble servant of the Lord—but I would suggest that you consider what I am saying."

The pause was much longer this time. Eventually the silence was broken by her father.

"Can her... mind be... fixed?"

"I'm afraid that there has been nothing found yet to cure this mental illness," Father Joseph said, his voice regretful. "But there are doctors who are interested in helping those like Mary Alice. If I were you, I would commit Mary Alice to one of these asylums, where they will be much better suited to care for her special needs."

"An asylum?!" Peter cried. "Yeh think our daughter's crazy, then?"

"You don't, Peter?" Charlotte answered. "She sees people dying in her sleep. If that ain't crazy, then what is, huh?"

"No, no," the pastor's deeper voice cut off her father's reply. "That is a common misconception about asylums. The patients there are ill, not crazy. There is even one institution near here which is developing new procedures which are showing promising results in curing them."

"I ain't sending no child of mine to one of them loony bins," Peter argued. "I'd sooner have her die. 'Sides, them places cost money we don't have."

"Actually, I could help you with that," Father Joseph put in quickly. "I have an associate who is involved in these new procedures, and I'm sure he'd be very interested in Mary Alice's case. It would not be difficult for him to arrange everything satisfactorily, I'm sure."

"Please, think Peter. We—"

"No, Charlotte," her father cut her off. "We can deal with this ourself. Thank yeh, Father, for your help."

"If you're sure I can give no more..." Father Joseph paused, then sighed. "I will leave, then. Please, if you change your mind, feel free to come to me. The church's doors are always open for you."

"Good day, Father Joseph."

Mary Alice could hear footsteps in the hall, and the creak and snap of the door opening and closing, then nothing. Her father stood at the door of her room for a moment, staring at her as she curled close to the wall. His eyes were blank.

"You ain't to leave this room."

And he shut the door.

As she listened to the sound of a key turning in the lock on the outside, Mary Alice closed her eyes.

_Father Joseph struggles to draw another breath through cracked lips. His fingers no longer strong enough to clutch his rosary, he whispers prayers with his last breaths._

"_Good Lord, you have taught us to love those that hate us, to bless those who curse us, just as thou hast done. Pray, bless that young girl who has cursed this town, for she knew not what she did. May she find mercy in thee and be brought back into thy fold with the righteous..."_

It would be upon them soon.

And, as Mary Alice gave herself to the helplessness of her situation, she could feel the other pain—different to the one of death—reach out and grasp her in its inescapable claws.

oOo

The gossip spread through the small shipping town like a storm wind.

_Their child's insane,_ she heard people whisper behind their hands as they walked past the house, unaware of her sitting below the front window,_ possessed by the devil._ And they crossed themselves, scandalised eyes burning holes into her quivering soul.

But this much Mary Alice did know: she wasn't evil. Nothing bad had ever come from the things that she knew.

Until now.

Now, everywhere she looked she saw pain—suffering--death in peoples' faces. It was upon them now, she knew; the thick cloud of the dark tomorrow had finished waiting. It was beginning to swallow up the bright today. She had failed to convince anyone to accept her warnings.

But it _had_ come.

Another face flashed before her eyes; they never went away now. A beautiful young man with tousled bronze hair screamed with unadulterated agony. His pain seemed different to the others, more intense—tendons in his neck stood out in stark relief—but he burned too.

Mary Alice shivered, shying away from the ferocity of his pain, and tried desperately to see only the blue forget-me-nots that grew on the windowsill. His face would not fade like the others eventually did and she was forced, for three long days, to watch and sometimes listen as he suffered. She couldn't even sleep.

When the torment finally drained from his bloodless face, she was finally able to banish his image—his beauty even more excruciating in death.

And she fainted.


	6. Chapter 5: January 1920

_**A/N**--Hello again, I'm back with a new chapter. I won't waste your time with excuses. I have lots of other things I'm working on, so I have to make priorities. And I'm getting into a bit of a painful stretch in this story, which is always harder to write. Holidays soon, so I look forward to a little extra time to devote to this one. I hope you enjoy this chapter._

_Thanks again and again for those wonderful loverlies who review. I write this story for you, my dears, just know that :D If you haven't written a review yet, please do. I have to admit that, with all the other stories that float around in my head, I sometimes forget that I'm even working on this one. Reviews remind me that it still exists and that there are people who want to read more. So if you think I'm taking too long to post, review and tell me that you're still waiting. Believe me, I'm pretty easy to guilt trip!_

* * *

The snow sifted slowly through the still air, each flake coming to a gentle rest in piles that covered every surface. Mary Alice watched with wonder. She scratched her arm absently as she stared out of the small window, aggravating the red marks that already lined her pale skin.

It confused her, the snow. It was much to early for it to be snowing. Mary Alice tried to remember how long she had been living in this room. Her last recollection of not being in this place was when she had watched her father jump into the back of an army truck and drive away at the end of September. She had cried—he hadn't said goodbye and he was going to miss her thirteenth birthday.

And then she was here.

She looked around her small room. The walls were a non-committal shade of off-white, the single window minuscule. Her small metal-frame bed was the only piece of furniture.

Mary Alice frowned. This wasn't her room, not the one she remembered sharing with her baby sister. Where was she then?

There was a dull thumping coming from the the other side of the wall opposite her—Cynthia? No, too loud to be made by a baby. Then who? Where? When? How?

She struggled to remember. What had happened after her father had gone off to fight in the war? Slowly, in a sluggish montage, memories resurfaced.

_Screaming in the dark. The sound of her mother crying. Father Joseph knocking at the door. "I can't handle her on me own, Father. Even though she don't move from her room, I can always hear her—whimperin' and thrashin', screamin' through the night...". Walking out the front door, small suitcase in hand, in the dead of night next to a strange man..._

Mary Alice blinked. She was in Whitfield—her mother had finally sent her to the Mental Asylum. Shortly after Peter had enlisted, influenza had spread through the small seaport of Biloxi. Just as she'd predicted, hundreds of people died.

Charlotte had been frantic about the possibility of Cynthia getting sick, terrified that Peter would never return to her, and unable to cope with her eldest daughter's worsening condition. Those who'd been there when Mary Alice had made her plea for people to listen would cross the street to avoid 'the mother of the child who cursed us', making her life all the more difficult. So she asked Father Joseph to arrange for Mary Alice to be sent away to the Mississippi State Insane Asylum.

And this empty room was her life now.

Again, she wondered how long she had been there. Her brain felt very slow, like it had been filled with sand. She scratched at her arms again, but barely noticed how sharp her unusually long nails were against her skin. If it was snowing, it must at least be December, but she couldn't be sure. She didn't even know if this was the first snow she'd seen. Had Christmas passed yet—or even two? She couldn't tell.

Mary Alice sighed again, scratching the back of her neck now. Why couldn't she remember anything? She felt like there were pieces of her missing—the lack of sensations frustrated her. And she was hungry.

She looked up as the door behind her rattled and unlocked, hoping that someone was bringing her something to eat. A sour looking nurse stood in the open door, her white uniform a little crumpled and dull.

"Time for your walk, Alice," she said dully, moving to pull the girl to her feet.

There were was another girl with the same name who had already been here for two years when Mary Alice had arrived. To avoid confusion, the nurses had taken to simply calling her Alice, as there was no Alice in the ward. It was even embroidered on the breast of her thin grey shift.

_Patient 285 Alice. Ward 5, room 36. _

Mary Alice stood without complaint, not even noticing how cold the floor was, though her feet were bare. She shuffled behind the nurse, who took her for a short walk down the hall to the bathroom. There she was allowed to relieve herself and the nurse carelessly wiped her down with a damp cloth. Then up another hall, turned a corner and back down to her room.

Mary Alice drifted back to her bed. It was darker now—night time yet? She wasn't sure, but she curled up and rested her head on the pillow anyway. Her mind was full of strange things; some of them nice, but most of them not. She did the best she could to ignore the flicker of images in her peripheral vision. Even as they grew bigger and wilder, and closed in on her till she was suffocating under their weight.

And she was still hungry.

oOo

When the door opened again the next day, Mary Alice barely stirred. A different nurse—a plump lady with a head as round as a puffer fish and thin brown hair plastered back against her head in a tight bun—bustled in and placed a tray down on the bed at the girl's feet.

Food.

Mary Alice was up in a flash, leaning over the tray of meagre pickings protectively, just in case the nurse decided to take it away. Maybe she was so fat because she stole the other patient's food for herself. She threw the woman a suspicious glare, but the nurse remained where she was.

Not bothering with the plastic fork that rested next to the plate, Mary Alice stuffed the cold scrambled eggs into her mouth with her fingers, barely chewing before she swallowed it down. The two cold and unbuttered pieces of toast followed quickly after. She reached for the small glass of water, ready to drain it too, but the nurse's chubby hand got there first.

"Hold up, there, Alice," she reprimanded as Mary Alice glared at her again. "You have to take your pills with that."

Mary Alice reached out for the glass anyway and the nurse shook her head.

"Open your mouth, child, and then I'll give you the water."

Mary Alice contemplated for a second, still suspicious. But she was thirsty. She opened her mouth and the nurse's fat fingers pushed the two round, white tablets to the back of her throat. Before she could spit them out, the nurse poured in a mouthful of water, and Mary Alice swallowed eagerly. She could feel two lumps travelling down her throat, but the wetness that accompanied them was worth it.

The nurse patted her on the head and handed her the now half-empty glass, as though rewarding a puppy.

"Good girl," she simpered. "Here you go."

Mary Alice chugged down the rest of the water, sucking at the rim when it was gone too soon. She looked down at the empty tray, to make certain that there was no more food left. Though the meal was small, it should have been plenty to fill a young girl's stomach. But she was still hungry.

The nurse picked it up from beneath her nose and bustled back out of the room, carefully shutting the door behind her. Mary Alice sank back and the images started to flicker at the edges of her vision again, as they did when she was on the brink of sleep. But the nurse returned before they could overwhelm her.

"Up you get, child," she commanded primly. "It's time to see the good doctor."

For a moment, the nurse looked very different. She was cowering back, shoulders hunched and arms held tightly down as though she were trying to make herself shrink, become less visible. Her lips trembled and a thin welt had appeared across her cheek. Mary Alice blinked in surprise and the vision was gone. But she understood.

"Quickly now, the doctor doesn't have all day to wait on you," she insisted, flapping her hands at the girl.

Mary Alice stood up and shuffled across the room. She paused when she reached the door, looking up into the much larger woman's face with pity.

"Run away," she told her solemnly. "He can't hurt you if you're not there."

The nurse looked taken aback and she touched the back of her head, then smoothed down her hair to hide the action. Chubby fingers taking a firm grip on the tiny girl's shoulder, the nurse made a disapproving sound.

"Come along, now."

Of everything about this place, the doctor stood out most clearly in Mary Alice's memory. As did the fact that she did not like him.

He was a very tall, almost skeletal in his thinness, with white hair but balding at the front. His limbs were all knobbly and gnarled, including his head which wobbled precariously atop a spindly neck. His eyes, however, contradicted the frailty of the rest of his body; they were hard and shrewd, almost cruelly so.

It was his eyes that made Alice dislike him so much. Those eyes went right down to the bottomless darkness of his heart, and she knew that he held very little real interest in 'curing' her and returning her to her family. To him, she was a means to an end. And she did not matter.

"Is this patient 285?" he demanded, his voice surprisingly loud.

"It is, Mr Lividston," the nurse replied curtly. "Alice, be a good girl and sit down, child."

Mary Alice reluctantly moved further into the small office. A high bed, covered with crinkly brown paper, stood against the wall and a wooden stool sat in front of it. The nurse stood by the door, trying to be unobtrusive, and the doctor stood up from behind his desk.

"Alright, then, let's have a look at you," he sighed, bored.

He put his folder down on the high bench and lifted Mary Alice up beside it with little effort. His lips pursed thoughtfully.

"It seems the subject has lost weight in the past month," he murmured to himself, making a note on his clip board. "Say aah."

Mary Alice scratched at her arms, her mouth firmly closed. Bad things happened when she opened her mouth. Mr Lividston raised a hand, _his eyes hard as glass, she feels the sting of a slap against her cheek_—she shrunk back in terror and the nurse stepped closer. The doctor cleared his throat, his bony fingers pried her mouth open.

"Say aah," he repeated.

When he was done with the general health check, Mary Alice was returned to the wooden stool and the doctor returned to his desk. His elbows rested on the desk, fingers peaked, he looked down his nose at the little girl.

"Now, last time we spoke..." he looked down at his notes, "Alice... you claimed that you could predict the future. May I presume that this is a continuing delusion?"

"I'm not crazy," Mary Alice protested, glaring. Shadows crowded in in the edges of her vision; she scratched her arm. "I do see the future."

"These visions," he continued, "I believe, are manifestations of suppressed anxiety from earlier childhood. Tell me about your parents."

Mary Alice wanted to hit him for suggesting that she had bad parents. How was this supposed to make her better? There was nothing wrong with her—she could just do something that most other people couldn't understand. Why was that so bad?

"I'm not telling you anything," she retorted. "You just want to make excuses to keep me here. You don't care if I never go home."

"Patient is beginning to show signs of paranoia," Mr Lividston said to himself as he made another note on his sheaf of papers.

The shadowy figures on the edges of her sight loomed closer, darker. Mary Alice wanted to jump up and shout at this indifferent, cruel old man.

"_Horrible monster!" _

_The door opens and a pair of rough hands grab the tops of her arms, meaty fingers fulling encircle the too thin limbs. The hands lift her from the wooden stool, carry her away; back to her empty room._

Mary Alice shielded her face with raised hands, shaking her head back and forth evasively. Her breath came in gasps—_it hurts!—_and she cowered back.

"Don't touch me, don't touch me!"

"Hmmm..." the doctor's tone remained detached, and he continued to observe her behaviour down the crooked length of his nose. He studied Mary Alice, still hunched protectively in on herself, as one might contemplate a cornered and half beaten spider before delivering the final blow.

"I think that will do for now, Nurse Rivers," he decided, and made a final note in Mary Alice's file. "I suggest that we continue with the cocaine treatment, two tablets in the morning and an additional dose in the evenings. Let that prescription stand for another year or so, and we'll re-evaluate her monthly progress after then. I'm interested in studying its effects in a range of cases; she can be my variable in delusional behaviour."

The nurse nodded, her round little head rolling forward, then backward, and she took the thin file the doctor handed her.

"Up now, Alice," the nurse commanded, brusque but not unkind. "Let's leave Mr Lividston to see his next patient."

_Victim_, Mary Alice corrected silently as she stood up, not cringing at all when the rotund nurse placed a hand on her shoulder to guide her from the room. This woman wouldn't wish to do her any harm, she knew. She didn't look behind her as the door swung closed behind them, just down at her shuffling, bare feet. The tiles were dull with fine grit.

Her room was dimmer than it had been when they'd left—the snow clouds heavily shrouded the sun; the little oil lamp in the wall was out of fuel. So Mary Alice was left in the dark. Alone.

Another year, he'd said. Which meant that she'd been here a year already. And it was snowing now. That meant that there were two birthdays Mary Alice couldn't quite remember—she was 14 years old. Nearly a woman.

Nurse Rivers returned when true dark had fallen, two more pills and a small glass of water clutched in one flabby hand. She held the water securely out of reach as the girl stretched out a claw to snatch it away.

"Mouth open first," she reminded.

Mary Alice blinked up at her, still seated on the squeaky bed, and considered mutiny for a moment. But she knew that the woman was easily three times her size, and she really was very thirsty. And _hungry_. But she'd take what she could get.

With a sigh, she opened her mouth. The two sour pills hit the back of her tongue, just on that spot where it was too difficult to spit them out easily, and a splash of water followed quickly after. Mary Alice swallowed convulsively.

"More," she murmured, her hands still reaching. She didn't even notice how chill the glass was when it was finally placed in her grasp. But there was, again, too little left and it was gone again too soon.

"Good girl," the nurse patted her head, running her hand down the length of long, knotted black hair that had, somehow, been left untrimmed in the year she'd been there.

Disappointment curled in Mary Alice's empty stomach as the nurse turned to leave once more. She had hoped she might have brought her a secret snack—she seemed to like her—or would at least stay a little while to keep her company.

_She begins to open the door and the man shoves her shoulder with brutal force. She falls, skidding across the floor to collide painfully with the wall._

"_Late again!" he roars. "You'd rather waste your time with them filthy loonies, than be coming home to help your own mother 'round the house! I reckon I still left a few lessons unteached—maybe that's why you still ain't married."_

"No...!" Mary Alice gasped, abruptly on her feet.

The nurse paused, her expression guarded. Mary Alice felt tears of pity well in her eyes.

"He can't hurt you if you're not there," she said again, sinking back on the bed. The nurse blinked, Mary Alice scratched her shoulder furiously.

"Run away." she murmured, her eyes drooping as darkness fell on her. "Far, far away..."

And the nurse left. Mary Alice never saw her again.


	7. Chapter 6: Spanning 1921

**A/N: **_Goodmorning, starshine, the earth says hello! And I have a new chapter for you. YAY! I love this chapter... it's broken up into little bits, so it's disjointed, and I love the effect that makes. I'm hoping you can all guess who the 'woman' I mention several times in this chapter is. Let me know if you're not sure, or tell me if you think it works ;)_

_Again, thanks so, so SO much to my loverly reviewers. Some of you didn't have accounts, so I couldn't reply to you, but I appreciate everyone's input! Don't forget to keep reviewing to make sure you get more fast updates like this week :P Enjoy!!!_

_**Edited 16/10/09:** I've just added a little bit to this chapter, kudos to anyone who can guess who it is :D_

A baby cried and Mary Alice turned her head around to the sound—Cynthia? There was nothing there. But the baby continued to wail in her ear, insistent. An emotion bloomed inside her; an urge to pick up the baby and run. Hide his weak little body away before anything could harm him... _before he can hurt him_.

_A woman's face—young but mature, kind but wary. A letter flutters to the floor. She looks down, her hand presses to her stomach, and a new determination fills her gentle eyes. Motherly concern; protection. And she leaves._

Mary Alice sank back onto the cold linoleum floor, and returned to staring at the cracked ceiling. She was tired—she was always tired—but she was much more comfortable here than on the bed. Though the room was dark and cool, even the ragged blanket was too warm and the material of the sheets made her itch even worse.

Mother. She supposed she should miss her mother, and her father too, but she couldn't find the appropriate longing for them within herself. They had become merely words to her now—they were hazy figures in her mind's eye. Cut-out figures in a dolly chain of people she couldn't remember.

The shadow of someone running past flashed in the corner of her eye and she whipped her head to the side again, but there was still nothing there. There was never anything there. Nothing but nothing.

She sniffed, trying to stem the constant drip of her nose. It did little, except to tickle the back of her throat and she hacked up a cough. She was hungry, and the small meal she'd eaten only an hour ago seemed as far distant to her as the warm wind or unhindered sunshine did when, in her world, it was snowing.

Again, she reminded herself. She couldn't recall, now, just how long she'd been here, but her time in the Asylum stretched back in her memory far enough that logic told her that this was not the first snowy season of her stay. Nor her last—_snowing, still snowing, it builds in big white drifts against the window_.

Her eyelids suddenly felt like they were made of lead. It was morning, but she was exhausted and hungry. And hot. She turned her head to the side, pressing one blazing red cheek to the cold floor, and sighed.

So tired... the inside of her lids was just as interesting a view as the blank room. And the visions followed everywhere her eyes went. Her head felt light, her limbs floating on the stream of conciousness, and she drifted into sleep.

_The woman glances at the door. Before she knocks, she hides her small suitcase in the front hedge. Fear of disapproval. She is anxious as she waits for the door to be answered; she has to get away soon._

"_One last visit," she whispers, and knocks again._

_The door is answered and her mother frowns slightly. Disapproval. But she will leave soon._

The green of the grass was fluorescent. Mary Alice didn't know such a colour existed any more. She could sometimes see a small patch of the sky through the window, so blue was real; easy to believe in. But not green—it was not real, could not be real.

She slid out of her chair and dropped to her hands and knees, feeling the cool green on her skin. But it wasn't real, couldn't possibly be real. A hand wrapped around her tiny white arm and pulled her away from it.

"Whatever are you doing?" a female voice demanded. A nurse. "Stay on your seat child—you'll get filthy rolling on the ground like that."

Filthy... dirty. Dirt was brown—brown existed. But not like this brown; it was a dull, choking colour. Cloying dust and dried blood on half-healed scabs. This brown was rich and vibrant. It was the brown of made life, not destroyed.

The sunshine was weak, but growing stronger and brighter. The images on the edges of her vision were brighter too. _A new fern frond curls slowly out of its tight spiral, the feathery green opening to the light... a man in a military uniform looks up from the deck of a ship at the blazing sun, and he looks colourless against the electric blue sky and tossing waves... a bird jumps out of its nest and sings its anticipation to the skies. The eggs in its nest shudder and the bird swoops and swirls around the branches—a final celebration of freedom before the first egg hatches..._

Mary Alice wished she could just fly away like that. The blue sky was particularly inviting when seen like this—stretching to the horizon, contained by no man-made boundaries. If she could fly, she would go far away from this place. Maybe she could even leave her strange premonitions behind her.

She giggled, suddenly remembering that she had once thought that her ability to see these things that others couldn't might be a gift. Her special gift from God, she'd told herself then, to be able to warn everyone of all the bad things that were coming to get them; save them from getting hurt.

But really it was a curse. When she tried to help, she scared away her friends, her family; when she tried to warn them they turned their backs, pushed her away and left her all alone. Nobody she knew now actually cared about her. They said they were helping her—they "wanted to cure her"—but they only gathered the curse more tightly around her, until it crowded her mind. Her world was just as much fantasy and phantom as it was solid reality now. Where before the visions danced through her mind safely behind closed eyes, now they cavorted openly in the air around her; mixed into everything she saw so thoroughly that she could no longer tell what was real and what was not.

She'd been pushed so far away now, that she wasn't even sure that flying up and out of it could do any good, make any difference. It all clung to her till she was sure that she couldn't get away—till she clung to it too, invited it in. No, it would do no good to fly away. So she wouldn't even try....

It seemed like forever since she could remember not seeing the hurts of other people. The shadows were her constant companions—the people in them almost as welcome to her as the good ones, the happy ones. Even if they were cruel, or suffering, or depressed, they cared enough about her to tell her their stories. To lift a little of the pressing claustrophobia.

oOo

She was outside again, though she couldn't remember how she'd gotten there from her small room in the red-brick building behind her. But the sun that blazed down on her through a large crack in the bank of white clouds pressed in on her just as much as the greying walls of her cell. It was too open here, too bright and exposed. So the visions—even dark ones—where just as welcome as ever.

This woman had visited her several times now. It was strange how Mary Alice could remember her story, when her own history—so bogged in the depths of her failing memory—took such concentrated effort to recall to her mind.

_She also stands in the strangely blinding light—a final bright ray before the sun sinks below the horizon—and she stands on the edge of a precipice. Her caramel hair swirls about her face and the wind throws sparkling drops of her tears over the steep decent. Her arms pull into her chest and she cradles an imaginary baby in her arms, her body still soft with the roundness of bearing a child._

Her vision suddenly flashed to dark.

_A strangely familiar man runs across a dark field toward the ragged edge of a forest ahead. Something pale and silent ghosts his path._

Then the light returned.

"_Sleep child mine, there's nothing here, while in slumber at my breast, angels smiling, have no fear, holy angels guard your rest..." she murmurs, the haunting tones of a lullaby. "My little Cullen... gone too. He disappeared so quickly—too soon."_

Dark again.

_Sweat drips into his eyes, making his close-cropped brown curls slick back to his skull. His chest is heaving with laboured breath as he weaves through the scrub and he stumbles—it's getting closer._

Bright light.

_Her arms drop to her sides and her swimming eyes close._

"_I'll find you," she whispers, her lips barely moving. _

Darkness.

_He is suddenly on the ground, leaf litter pressed against his nose and in his mouth. A hard hand holds him down and something icy smooths against his neck._

"_Stop me if I linger too long," a sweet high voice commands._

Light.

"_I'm coming to find you... my Cullen."_

Dark.

_And hard, sharp blades slash at his throat._

_And she steps over the edge. _

Screaming. Mary Alice pressed the heals of her hands into her eyes, trying to force the images back into the darkness. _Her bones crack, her eyes flutter. "Wait for me..." she croaks. Blood bubbles on his lips. "I'm sorry... Char-aaaaarrrrgghh!" _It was over but the pictures lingered, one superimposed onto the other. Tears poured down her cheeks as she continued to stare at the body of the broken young mother, at the struggling deadman.

"What's the matter?" firm hands held her up. "What happened, uh... Alice?"

"Gone... she's gone... he's gone..." she whispered a hoarse reply. "Jumped. Broken. Dead."

The same person clicked their tongue. The image was fading now, and Mary Alice could see the nurse shake her head and roll her eyes. Her hands were still hard as she held the thin girl on her feet and lead her slowly to the back door, in the building's shadow. The girl embraced the cool darkness—she didn't ever want to be in the light again. She didn't trust the light any more. Only the dark could protect her now.

oOo

Screaming. The girl was still screaming. Stella wanted to press her hands to her ears to block out the sound. The screams were scratching, constantly breaking as the pitch wavered.

The girl was normally so quiet; it was often creepy, how silent she was in comparison to the others. She didn't make strange noises, or spasm uncontrollably, or shout for no reason, though she did jump and start at the smallest things—but living in Whitfield Mental Asylum for three years would make anyone paranoid, especially such a fragile young girl. Stella had wondered if there was even anything wrong with the child.

But apparently she'd been screaming like this, without break, for two and a half days now. She didn't stop—not to eat, not even to sleep. Stella had gone in there an hour ago to make the routine morning check, bearing the usual small tray of breakfast. The girl—Alice, she remembered—had been huddled in the darkest corner, and she hadn't responded with her usual interest to the announcement that her meal had arrived. When Stella had got near enough to touch her, she'd writhed and shrieked, impossibly louder than before, and Stella hadn't dared try to force her medication down her throat.

Stella stared at the door, indecisive. She'd only just finished the rest of her rounds, and she was debating if she should go to see Mr Lividston. He would be seeing patients from the west wing today, and he was always so cross when he was interrupted from his work. And he gave her the creeps just as much as any patient in this building.

No, Alice hadn't appeared hurt in any way, so it couldn't be anything major. Other patients screamed, and nobody bothered about them—this wasn't really any different, was it? The nurse on duty before Stella had said as much as they chatted while she finished her shift. Nobody else thought it was necessary to talk to Dr Lividston, so she didn't need to bother him yet.

But it bothered her. If she wasn't even eating—surely that was a problem. And she wasn't taking her medication either. How could she be cured if she didn't take her medication? Stella hesitated another moment, then returned to her usual duties.

She would try again at lunch, she finally decided, and if nothing had changed then she'd again consider talking to the doctor.

oOo

_Burning, they are burning. He burns and she burns and I burn as they burn and it hurts so much. Screaming. It doesn't help, but we must scream—it hurts so much. Soothing whispers in her ear, they comfort me too, but he is all alone in the dark and we still scream. Even with the cold breath on her cheek, the icy fingers tracing her hands, the sweet melody of a piano in the next room; she burns, so I burn. He burns. And we scream._

oOo

"Why was I not notified of this immediately?" Dr Lividston's hard eyes flashed. "Explain yourself Nurse Jackson."

"I'm sorry doctor," Stella hung her head, her cheeks flushed with embarrassment. "I was told by the nurse before me that it was nothing worth troubling you over. But when I read in the patient's notes that she'd been screaming for so long, I thought that maybe this was more serious than they thought."

The screaming had gotten too much for her to handle—with the girl's room so close to the workstation, she could hear nothing else, couldn't block it out—and she had hoped that the doctor would be able to do something to quiet her.

The doctor scowled, but let it go. He glanced over the record sheet, his frown deepening.

"I assume," he grumbled ominously, "that you have been just as unsuccessful in administering the patient's medication today as have the other incompetents before you."

He didn't bother looking up to see Stella's small nod of assent. He heaved an irritated sigh and strode across his office to pull open a cupboard above his head. His hand came out of the recess clutching a syringe and a small glass bottle of clear liquid.

"Three days without medication will not make much difference in this case, I suppose," he muttered to himself. "The patient has been on this treatment for three years now, with little change. The only interesting development in all this time and I have been left unaware! This would not happen in a better funded facility..." he stopped ranting, as though he just recalled that Stella was still in the room.

"Well, lead the way, Nurse Jackson. Step lively!"

oOo

She could feel the end coming now. A few hours ago, it had reached this same screaming peak, then suddenly diminished for a time; halved as the man's face stuffed out like a candle. _But it still burns—hotter and hotter again!—but fading, more vague... less touchable. _She could almost separate herself from it now, but she continued to scream reflexively, out of habit. And when the woman screamed louder, when the heat beat even hotter with every frantic thump of her heart, Mary Alice screamed louder with her.

The door opened again, spilling a square of light into the pitch dark room. Light. Light was hot and hot was bad. Light was bad—she huddled closer into her dark corner. _Hotter and hotter; tighter and tighter; faster and faster; smaller and smaller. Screaming. Excruciating._

Mary Alice was vaguely aware of voices. One voice in particular she recognised with mild horror. That voice didn't belong here, why had he come here? Even if the bad heat had invaded her safe darkness, that voice should not have come too—it was too much. _Too hot, too fast!_

And then it was gone.

Her scream choked off, she swallowed it down instinctively as the source of it suddenly vanished. It left her, helpless, as the man with the voice crouched over her and spoke to her, but she couldn't understand. She tried to bring back the screaming—she couldn't think while it was with her. There was no remembering with it, there was no forgetting. But it was really gone.

Then the gnarled fingers had her arm and a sharp pain stabbed the inside of her elbow. Her eyes sprung open, for the first time in over three days, and she caught the flash of metal and glass. Cold seeped into her arm and the voice grumbled, barely comprehensible.

"Poor... medically induced... reduce dosage... one... morning and evening... food... protect experiment... health board... questions... can't..."

The door closed. Shadows began to flicker on the edges of her vision. Different to the normal ones—these were vague shadows. They were shapeless, soundless, harmless. Safe darkness. For once, she wanted to thank the voice. Thank him for the first kindness he had ever done her.

Maybe he did want to help.

oOo

Cold and dark. Snow fell outside the window and she watched in silent fascination. The flakes of white on grey were the only moving things in her stationary world. Everything else was still, except for the rattling twitch that was the breath moving in and out of her lungs. Nothing else.

She didn't worry any more, about remembering and forgetting. She knew that there were lots of things she should remember—what day it was, her age, where she was, how she got there... what had happened to her... her name.... Her name.

A vague memory stirred and she looked down. The word was upside-down and back-to-front to her view, but she could read it easily enough. Alice. Not quite right. She thought for a slow moment. M...ary. Mary Alice.

She smiled, and looked back at the falling snowflakes. She had remembered. As long as she could remember that much, she knew she would be okay. Everything would be fine, as long as she could just stay here alone in the cool, silent dark.

And remember her name.

* * *


	8. Chapter 7: Late 1923

**A/N – Hey guys, another chapter!!! Thank-you times a million to everyone who reviewed my last chapter—I was so thrilled when I opened my email the day after I posted and found FOURTEEN reviews waiting for me. And they just kept coming after that. I felt so blessed.**

**I try to reply to every review that I get, so I want to remind you to make sure you log in (if you have an account) so that I can do that. For those of you who don't have accounts, I implore you to sign up so that I can thank you personally for reviewing. I'd like to give a special thanks to Bella C. who has sent me at least 4 reviews, to keep me on my toes and remind me to update soon. **

**I hope you all love this next chapter—and I really promise that the angst will be over soon! Enjoy! ^_^**

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There was nothing to disturb the unrelenting nothingness that was her life. _A little girl laughs, her jet black hair flying behind her as she soars "higher, HIGHER!" on a tire swing... a drinking glass shatters and the young woman shrieks in surprise. Her older brother teases that she'll break more glass with that scream... an old man clutches the wasted hand of his wife, murmuring soothing words as she slips away from him..._

Even the visions—those phantasmal images that roamed the dark, empty room—weren't really a distraction any more. But this was a good thing. Distractions meant change, and change was bad. The monotonous pattern of nothing was the only thing that stopped her from going over the edge; a madness that loomed right beneath her feet, waiting to swallow her completely.

The door opened. This was not a distraction—the door opened sometimes—but she flinched anyway. A nervous nurse shuffled into the room, and this was expected too. The dark sky was just turning grey with dawn. Food... breakfast? But there was no tray in her hands.

"Time to get up... Alice," she murmured, as though she were afraid that the girl on the floor would actually hear her. "The doctor wants to see you today."

"_Mary Alice... a pretty name..."_ She didn't react.

"Come on," the nurse moved closer, touched her cold shoulder. "Doctor Magyar won't wait forever."

She blinked and almost managed a frown. This name was not familiar to her, though she sometimes had trouble just remembering her own. _Mary Alice_, she reminded herself again, _I am Mary Alice_. But this new name sounded bad; she didn't want to see who it belonged to—a new doctor couldn't mean anything good.

"What..." she croaked, but the nurse appeared to have decided that she was no threat, and pulled her into a sitting position.

Mary Alice gave no opposition as she was pushed and nudged onto her feet, and she shuffled along unsteadily when the nurse moved toward the light. She closed her eyes and turned her face away as they got closer—the light hurt. It was hot and stabbed her eyes, and made the visions brighter, clearer... scarier.

They twisted and turned through corridors, up a flight of stairs and past door after door after door. Mary Alice tried to keep her mind in the dark spaces and focussed on slow and predictable rhythms. The madness would not get her; she would stay safe. But it lurked, closer now than normal. It always was in the mornings, before the pattern continued and the nurse would bring her food and those large white tablets. That made it step back—the madness would wait until the medication wore off to reach out and try again.

Finally, they reached their destination and Mary Alice could concentrate a little better on ignoring the chasm before her when she didn't have to walk. The edge had kept trying to slide under her moving feet.

The doctor's office was small and very bright—the fluorescent light relentlessly pressed down—though the single window was smothered by heavy curtains. She sat in front of a scuffed desk, scattered with papers. She stared at the man who lounged back in the large leather chair behind it, suspicious.

"So who is my first visitor today?"

He sat up slowly, his eyes intense on her face, and she shivered. They were an unsettling shade of red-brown, similar to the curtains that hung so limply behind her—like cracked scabs, with congealing blood seeping at the edges. The rest of his face was smooth and angular, his arching eyebrows and closely curled hair were jet black, and his olive skin had a pasty overtone, as though he spent his entire life indoors. Combined with the shadows under his strange eyes, she thought it made him look unwell.

The nurse cleared her throat, nervous again. "This is patient 285, Doctor Magyar. We call her Alice."

Doctor Magyar did not indicate that he had even heard the nurse speak, as he continued to stare at Mary Alice. She blinked back at him several times, turning away to stare at the blank wall to her right when he said nothing else. The light was still too bright, the colourful scenes pressed in on her mind, and fear stirred in the pit of her empty stomach.

"Will you tell me your name, child?" he asked, when the silence had stretched on too long.

"Um... Alice has not been responsive to communication for a year, Doctor," the nurse informed him, simpering. "I believe Doctor Lividson decided in her last examination that she had moved on to a progressed stage of depression."

"She has said nothing for an entire year?" he asked. His voice lilted and jerked in strange places, as though he were unused to forming these words. "And the doctor before me was unconcerned by this development—does that not seem peculiar to you?"

The nurse shrugged. _"Better silent, than screaming blue murder every hour of the day..." _"I am just a nurse, doctor, I have no right to oppose the decisions made by a trained and qualified man such as Dr Lividson or yourself."

Dr Magyar ran his tongue over his even teeth, glancing down at the file open before him, and Mary Alice shivered again. The light fractured dangerously off those too-perfect, white incisors.

_His grey shift is filthy and he twists again in terror. Alfred. Terror plagues his every breath, and things stalk him in this dark hole. A flash of white in the dark—he screams. Cold hands, gleaming teeth, bottomless eyes and... fading. Red blood. Pulsing. The screams have stopped, replaced by a calm pull and gulp. Until it's all gone. Black._

Fear curled in her stomach, but this was no worse than the others. She continued to shudder, in silence. To scream would be to beckon the madness closer, invite it in.

"Here, it says that she was admitted for strong hallucinations and delusional behaviour—she claimed to be able to see the future?"

He paused and looked up at the nurse briefly. She shrugged her shoulders, tucking a strand of blonde hair behind her ear when his eyes landed on her.

"I didn't know that," she said, "the girl arrived long before I started work here."

He frowned, a slight tip at the corner of his lips.

"These records from shortly after she was admitted to the Asylum indicate that she was adamant that what she saw was real," he took another short moment to skip through the pages at a rate that couldn't possibly be comprehensible. "But her condition seems to have progressively deteriorated since medication began."

Mary Alice wasn't really listening to him—he talked about her as if she weren't there, and she pretended that she wasn't. The constant itch in her arms that never truly left felt worse than normal, and it had her scratching incessantly at the already red and rutted skin. She could feel his eyes staring at her again, making the hairs on her arms and the back of her neck stand on end. That didn't help with the itch, or the increasing sensation that something terrible was about to happen. The madness inched closer; her toes were over the edge now. _I'm falling..._

"Her full name is Mary Alice... a pretty name..."

She didn't react to her name except to shiver. His harsh foreign accent made it sound strange, like a threat. Eventually, he continued in his assessment, making a few brief notes in her file.

"Experiments have shown that cocaine has little addictive effect, unlike other drugs which have been used to produce similar results in cases such as this. That is one piece of luck, at least—I suggest we stop medication immediately," his eyes glinted as he turned his head to talk to the nurse, his eyes still trained on Mary Alice.

He took a deep, lingering breath as though he smelled something other than the sharp tang of bleach, which couldn't quite get rid of that mouldy smell that followed people as unhygienic as the asylum's inhabitants. Something he found pleasant.

"I want this girl to speak to me," he almost purred the words. "I want to dig out her secrets."

oOo

Sharp pain twisted in her stomach, and Mary Alice doubled over, curled tighter in on herself. She was so hungry. A hundred eyes watched her from every shadow—she wished she could make them go away, _go away_. All she could remember was pain and loneliness and cold and hunger. She wanted to forget again, forget it all; why wouldn't it go away like it did before?

She moaned and pressed her face into the floor, her eyes screwed shut. She was falling; the madness had got her now, and she was falling from that high-up place where she'd been safe from hurt. She was aware of her body now, she could feel it all and she didn't like it.

Her brain was buzzing. Somehow, it made every shout and cry of the others even louder, harder to block out than she remembered. She didn't want to hear them—to be able to think and comprehend—she just wanted the visions to come back and sweep her away from herself. Lift her out of her body so that she didn't have to feel, think or even exist. To just watch and see and observe.

The rattle of keys sounded behind her door. She hadn't realised she was actually locked into the room—she'd never bothered even trying to escape. Her room was dark and the dark was safe. The light as the door opened was even more piercing than usual, she cried out and hid her face in her arms. Solid heals thudded on the linoleum floor.

"Dinner Alice."

Her head snapped up and she stretched out her hands for the tray. Food. The nurse slowly lowered the tray and, impatient, Mary Alice snatched a handful of something off the plate and shoved it into her mouth before it reached the ground. It was soft, needing little chewing, and it had little flavour, but it felt good as she swallowed it. Food.

The nurse clicked her tongue in disapproval, but didn't say anything. She loomed silently as Mary Alice all but inhaled the food. The small, cold glass of water she didn't touch—she knew by now that it was for later. She was almost looking forward to when the nurse would drop the round white tablet into her mouth for her to gulp down with the water. Everything would go back to the peaceful nothing after that.

But when she had consumed every crumb of the food—carefully licking off each of her fingers, as well as the plate—the nurse didn't move. She looked up expectantly, even opened her mouth so that the nurse wouldn't have to force it open like they sometimes did. The nurse squatted down.

"Drink your water Alice," she commanded.

Mary Alice shook her head. She wanted her medication; she had accepted that she was sick now, and the horrid white tablets were fixing it. Maybe not in the way that they wanted it to, but it was enough for her. To be lost in the space between the present and the future—to never have room to think about the past—was a peaceful existence for her. It was enough. She pointed to her mouth, her eyes wide.

"You need to drink this water, girl."

Mary Alice frowned at her. Clearly, she was a new nurse—she didn't understand what she was asking for.

"Ta...b-le..t," she managed to choke out. It had been so long since she'd spoken, the sound felt like a sea urchin in her throat—prickling spikes of pain. The nurse looked confused, stunned, so she tried again. "Tab-let."

Eventually the nurse shook her head. Pity crept into her eyes as she picked up the glass and held it to Mary Alice's flat lips.

"The doctor says no more tablets," she reminded her. "So just drink your water."

Mary Alice opened her mouth to protest again, and the nurse poured in a mouthful of water. She gulped instinctively, spluttering when the nurse continued to pour it into her mouth straight away.

It was gone quickly and the nurse stood up with the tray. She turned to open the door again and let in more light. And she still hadn't given her what she needed. The man in the next room moaned and she heard the dull thud as he repeatedly knocked his head against the wall separating them. Would this woman leave her with no protection from the horrors of this place? Even the little protection that had started as a torture?

"Noo-o..." she groaned, reaching out a hand to her back. The nurse opened the door and Mary Alice flinched away from the sting of light. She groaned again and hid her face in her bony hands—she could feel tears leaking from her eyes.

"Do-on't... let i-t... get meee...!"

The door clicked quietly closed and the key turned in the lock. A faint scream reached her ears and Mary Alice suddenly, for the first time she could remember, felt just how cold the room was. Slowly, she crawled to the bed and huddled beneath the itchy blanket that wasn't enough to rid her of the convulsive shivers. Every single muscle that was left on her tiny body ached, her bones felt like splinters of ice, and her breath rasped in her chest. These were familiar feelings, but she had used to be able to banish them from her awareness with those visions that were so ready to engulf her. So she had never felt just like this before.

She'd never felt so irrevocably alone.


	9. Chapter 8: Late 1923 to Early 1924

**A/N –** _Wow, this chapter has taken me FOREVER to post. There's no excuse, really, it's been almost finished for weeks. My bad. I'll try to be a little quicker with the next one, but no promises. NaNoWriMo is coming up in less than a month now and I'll be concentrating on that (as well as all the essays and stuff I have due end of semester!) but I will try my best!_

_I hope nobody feels like I'm dragging this story out too much, but I really feel like this all needs to be said. I find that most people seem to just skip over the asylum part of Alice's story, but I think it contributed the most to the type of character she ends up as, even if she remembers none of it afterwards._

_Thanks to those of you who've sent me reminders to keep going with this story, and everyone that reviews. Please, if you haven't reviewed yet and you'd like me to keep going, make sure you review so that I know that you're counting on me too. Enjoy, guys!_

***NB* **_I almost forgot! I've updated the chapter before last--**Please go back and read it before you read this one.** I've come up with a new plot twist... and there's a little bit in this chapter which will make more sense if you've read the added parts of chapter 6 (as in, go back 2 chapters from here). _

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She thrashed in her bed, but a pair of hands grabbed her arms and, with strength much greater than her own, pulled her upright. Her feet kicked in every direction, but the hands didn't drop her. A low, rough voice spoke directly behind her ear.

"Go ahead and tell the doctor how she has reacted," it said. "I think he'll still be interested to see her himself, but best warn him."

"Of course," was the high pitched reply, followed by the clip of small heels in the hall.

She couldn't see who the voices belonged to—she'd closed her eyes the moment the door opened. When she'd been told to stand, rather than eat, she'd known that they wanted her to go into the light. Last time she'd gone willingly into the light, it had hurt more than just her eyes. Her memory was still hazy, but she remembered this with crystal clarity; perhaps because she knew that it would happen again. And again and again.

_Lightning flashes up my fingertips, branches in crackling rivers through my chest, fills my head. Then writhing, jerking, screaming. But it won't stop. He won't stop!_

She flinched and a scratchy scream escaped her lips. The hands tightened and she was in the light now. It didn't hurt her—not yet—but it soon would. The light that hurt was even brighter. It came with tight bands fixed around her wrists and ankles and fat wires ending with ice cold metal caps that stuck to her temples and left red hot welts behind when it was all over.

She could hear his voice now and she struggled harder. That voice—the one as sharp and clear as the ring of a burning star—meant that the pain was close. She could hear him speak, but the words meant nothing to her.

"It is inevitable, I suppose," he sighed. "The girl is mentally ill, but hardly unintelligent. When Professor Cerletti and I discussed how electricity might be used to induce therapeutic convulsions, we quite disagreed on this point. It is one reason which prompted me to release myself from under his tutelage and continue research in this area on my own."

She whimpered and tried one last desperate struggle for freedom as the inescapable hands pressed her down to a bed. _Please—_she could see it coming, could feel it already, again and again, on and on. _Please stop._

oOo

She couldn't remember how, but she was suddenly in the dark and cool and damp of her room. Huddled tight into the corner, she shivered and held her head in her hands. Her long hair—which had grown matted and wild during the five years in the asylum—had been shaved off weeks ago, when Dr Magyar had first begun this new torture. The sharp stubble of regrowth scratched against her fingers and she moaned.

Her head thrummed and pounded, and two needle-thin daggers of pain stabbed at the swollen circles on her temples. Her hands moved to her eyes, which were wet with tears. A cold hand rested on her prickly scalp.

"I'm dreadfully sorry about that," a smooth voice murmured out of the dark. "I imagine your hair was once very beautiful."

She jumped, and scampered further back into her corner in terror. The voice was familiar, but she couldn't remember precisely why. Just like the first time, her memories had been fried out of her throbbing brain. She couldn't even remember her own name—a fact that terrified her. _He is the only one who cares enough to comfort me... "Dear Mary Alice..." Perhaps he even loves me._ Something very pale shifted in the dark and she jumped again.

"I'm not here to hurt you, Mary Alice," the beautiful, smooth voice continued. "Please let me help you."

She looked toward the voice but could see only darkness. Darkness was good, she reminded herself; in the darkness, she was safe. Her throat was raw from her fruitless efforts to make her pain audible earlier in the day, so she could only manage the faintest whisper now.

"Who... are you?"

The unseen voice had no trouble hearing her.

"My name is Balint," he introduced himself, a smile in his tone. "You may call me Baal, if you like."

Baal; she could remember that. It sounded like the kind of name that would belong to a bodiless voice. But this visitor was something different, and Mary Alice had learned that change was not a good thing in this place. What if he brought the hurtful light in with him? She quivered.

"W-why...?"

"Why am I here?" he finished for her. She nodded, her throat sticking.

He paused as though he wasn't sure of the answer, and she found herself waiting anxiously for him to continue. His gentle voice was very soothing, as was the stroke of his hand on her nearly bald head, despite its chill. Everything in the dark was cold; she would much rather that than the searing heat of the brightness.

"I feel drawn to you, Mary Alice," he finally replied, after a deep breath. "You have suffered a great deal for such a young woman. Your already short life has been ruined before it even began and I find that you, out of all the others in this hospital, deserve some measure of comfort before... while you can still appreciate the value of comfort."

His answer took her a long minute to process—it had been such a long time that anyone had talked to her as though she could understand.

"You know... my name," she marvelled. She sniffed and rubbed her cold nose and cheeks, trying to rid herself of the persistent drip; like her brain was leaking away. "I... always forget—it scares me s-so...."

"Yes, I can't imagine how that must feel," Baal sympathised. His hand left her head for a brief second and then a soft piece of cloth was dabbing at her face. Mary Alice flinched instinctively from the new contact—_"I am sorry. I did not intend to frighten you."—_and the hand stopped.

"N-no, it's alright," she replied. "I... nobody... you..."

She couldn't find the words, couldn't understand what was happening. After everything she had gone through, she had long given up her naïve belief that the world was a good, beautiful place. It might well be for other people, but this life would never hold anything for her.

"I am sorry," his voice was a little rougher, as though he were fighting a strong emotion. "You have not been very well looked after here. And I do not imagine that you have had opportunities to make friends, even before you were sent here."

He paused, as though he expected her to agree or disagree with him. She sniffed again and closed her eyes. It made no difference.

"I don...t remember."

Baal sighed, an drawn-out hiss of air moving in the dark. The cold hand twitched her blankets up around her more securely, then returned to slowly stroking her stubbled head.

"Such a pity," he murmured.

Silence wove through the darkness like the song of endless sleep. Mary Alice strained her ears, trying to catch the sound of his breathing, but all she heard was her own death-rattle rasp. If it weren't for the cold, hard fingers that smoothed across her head and face, she would have thought that he'd disappeared into the night just as suddenly as he'd come.

"_You draw me to you," he says again, the voice in the dark. "I tell myself not to, but I continue to return here. I am fated, it seems, to be your friend at the end."_

"Are you... my f-riend?" she croaked.

The word stuck in her throat. She could barely grasp what it meant, the concept was so broad. The people in her visions had been her friends, though they tormented her as often as gave comfort; and she knew they were never really there. Maybe Baal wasn't really there either.

The cold hand left her skin instantly; a faint breath of wind brushed her hand as she reached into the dark to draw him back and there was a faint thud at the wall. Mary Alice waited, hardly breathing, her hand stretched out and eyes straining in the dark, but he did not return. Just like the visions, he was gone; she was left to hopelessly wonder if he'd ever come back, with no distraction from the pain.

oOo

Like a shadow, he sped across the empty fields that surrounded Whitfield Asylum, headed for the closest village. It wasn't long before he topped the final rise and moved down into the close-packed group of stone buildings.

All was dark and silent except for the sluggish thump of a thousand sleeping hearts that pounded in his ears. The raw life of it was inviting. He was so thirsty—it had been foolish of him to stop by her room before he headed out on the hunt. Now, after the added hours of restraining himself, he felt he might not make it to his intended destination. Some hapless human with their whole life ahead of them might needlessly pay for his twisted conscience.

No. He would make it. He was nearing the far side of town now and the breeze wafted the faint smell of bleach under his nose, mixing with the heady scent of life that already surrounded him. Just a little further.

He'd originally planned to feed only at the asylum, but he'd been surprised to find the conditions at Mississippi State Mental Hospital were considerably better than he had come to expect from such places. It meant that he had to be more careful than he was used to—these humans actually seemed interested in keeping the patients alive here—and that meant occasionally going further afield to fully satisfy himself.

Finding prey in a normal hospital was more involved than at an asylum, where it wasn't at all unusual to find bite marks on a dead body. A sane patient was more difficult; anything remotely suspicious was far more likely to be analysed. But it did make the hunt unusually challenging.

The life-blood of hundreds of unaware humans seared his throat with every breath, his senses spun with life and death. Another breath—death grew closer—his head snapped around to his right.

"Ide jöttem," he murmured, almost purred. "Patience, Balint, careful now."

It was easy enough for him to get in; he darted down a side alley, scaled the wall and slipped in through a window that had been left open in hope of tempting a gentle breeze in the still night. He stopped, his silhouette thrown against the far wall by the light of the full moon, and blinked. The brown glass contacts he wore to disguise the red of his eyes dissolved.

There were four humans in this room. He took a deep breath—the earthy smell of men dominated, mixed with only a whiff of the lighter musk of a healthy woman; the nurse, probably. But none of these men were slated for the morgue this night.

He slipped silently into the darker hall and sniffed again. To the left; he floated past two more rooms, halting when the scent overwhelmed him. _Severe burns, critical condition_, the plaque by the door read. Perfect.

Only two of the beds were filled in this ward. Neither the stench of the man's impending death nor the chemical tang of pain killers could override the luring scent of hot blood, pulsing savoury-sweet in the bed behind the curtain.

Balint paused for a moment—a fragment of a second—listening. There was only the sleeping lungs, the thumping hearts; the closest conscious being was on the opposite side of the hospital building.

In a single heartbeat he was behind the curtain. The man in the bed was very large, his bulging muscles were obvious even under the heavy white bandages. Balint knew that if he were human, this man would have no trouble fighting him off. If it weren't for the smell of mortality which clung so closely to him, a cloud of flies hanging over an almost-corpse, he would not believe that this man's injuries would kill him before morning.

Clear plastic tubes twisted out of his nose and mouth, another hung from a clear plastic bag on a hook and led to a bandage in his forearm, where he knew it fed the clear liquid directly into the bloodstream. Though his jaw ached to latch onto the man's throat, feel the crunch of small bones yield to his strength, now was not the time. He couldn't leave evidence, couldn't arouse suspicions.

For a moment he toyed with the idea of snapping the tube in the man's arm and using it like a straw. He shook his head with a grimace. Even if he couldn't allow his teeth to take hold, he needed to at least feel the warm flesh on his lips.

Quickly, silently, he detached the tubes and wires from the unmoving human and unravelled the bandages from the left arm. The drip needle slid easily out of its vein, leaving a trickle of blood behind. The smell was delicious sin, but the hole was minuscule—not nearly big enough to drink from. He shifted the needle in his fingers, holding it like a pencil, and carefully covered the human's mouth with the other hand.

One deft stroke was enough to pierce right to the vein. Blood gushed to the lips of the incision and Balint kissed them with his own. The hot elixir soothed his burning thirst, even as the dark scent thickened.

He was doing the man a service, really; saving him from a long and tortuous death. The tang of morphine proved that the fortunate human felt nothing. Later he would have to cover his tracks; make it look like the man had slit his wrist trying to remove the drip, hobbled to the sink, and bled to death under the running water. He would find a bag of blood in the blood-bank to make it look authentic.

Everyone would be satisfied.

oOo

Mary Alice shuddered and rolled over. She couldn't understand how she felt so cold, like everything in the room was made of ice. Her mind felt blank, still numb and buzzing from a horrific pain that she couldn't quite remember. Something flickered in the corner of her eye—_black hair fans out as a head whips around to face her_.

She put her hands up to her head and cringed when her fingers met the inch-short strands of her hair. How long had she been like this; what was happening to her?

_A gasp of fear in the darkness._

"_Please, I just wanted to find my husband—don't hurt me!"_

_The tinkle of bells rings in the quiet chuckle from the weight on her back. Something cold, hard and smooth brushes the long hair from her neck and she shivers._

"_Oh, don't worry," the childlike voice murmurs, "you'll have forever to look if you turn out well..."_

_And ripping, tearing—burning pain in her throat._

"_Peter!" she screams. "PETER, where ARE YOU?!"_

Mary Alice shrieked, clutching at her throat. It burned, _it burns!_

This searing pain was vaguely familiar and as Mary Alice screamed, she waited for it to stop like it should soon. But it continued—grew as the burning lava rolled slowly through her veins. She wished it would stop, wished that it would go away like it should, wished that she didn't have to feel like this any more. She hated that this pain was so familiar.

"Stop, _stop!_!" she shouted.

But screaming didn't help. So she cried. Barely able to feel her body for the scorching pain, she curled tight into herself and wept. Her tears must have been cold as they flooded her face, but she could not feel anything but the heat.

"Go away," she sobbed, clutching her head in her hands. "Please stop... leave me be... it hurts..."

It could have been minutes or hours later when she felt a hand resting on her bare arm; it was cold. There was someone with her; _she was all alone in the dark_. Mary Alice slapped at the hand, but it didn't move.

"Poor child," a soothing voice murmured.

_All alone, and she'd never see him again. She was trapped in hell; punishment for her sins had finally come. _She was cradled in someone's arms. The cool hardness of the body that held her made the fire in her veins seem less real, still painful but endurable.

Time stood still. Ebbed past so slowly that it was imperceptible. Sometimes the dark voice soothed and the cold touch kept her sane, other times she was just as alone as the woman with the jet black hair. All the time, she was in agony.

oOo

Mary Alice came to in the peaceful dark. He was with her, her invisible comforter, when the fire painstakingly burned itself out and the woman disappeared, now cold as stone.

"Aaahhhh..." she groaned a sigh of relief and let her body go limp in the cold one's arms. He smoothed down the sweaty spikes of her hair.

"It's over, then," he murmured, his voice smooth as silk. "What happened?"

"Ther—" her throat was raw, her voice raspy, and she coughed painfully. "There was a woman."

She frowned, clinging to the image of the burning woman, even as the details began to slip from her quicksand memory. The pain was already forgotten. Something else tried to rise to the surface but every time she reached out to retrieve it, there was nothing there to remember.

"I think I knew her."

Her comforter waited for her to continue, in what she guessed was surprised silence.

"How do you know her? Who was she?"

Mary Alice shook her head. She didn't know, couldn't remember; it hurt to try.

"She's gone now," she replied, dispassionately.

"I see."

He was silent again, but he continued to stroke her head with cold fingers. Mary Alice felt safe with him, her guardian of darkness. He was the only one left who cared what happened to her, who might even love her.

"Are you my friend?" she murmured, a sleepy fog settling over her mind.

A cold breeze floated around her, and she was suddenly curled up under her thin blanket, her cheek pressed to the rough cotton of her pillow. She caught a glimpse of moonlight through the high window, and her eyes folded shut of their own will.

She was unconscious before the ragged clouds raced to cover up that shining white light.


	10. Chapter 9: Mid 1925

**A/N – **Update, update, Update, UPDATE, Update, update! Alright, so this is a nice long one. Yes I have been listening—I am trying to make the chapters longer. Though this one would've been longer anyway. The words practically flew out of my fingertips whenever I got time to work on this (in fact I'm surprised I got it done so quickly, with NaNoWriMo this month and all... which I completed, btw!) so I hope you enjoy it. I have to say that it has been one of the most difficult, yet easiest and most rewarding chapter to write so far—the moment we've been waiting chapters for. I hope it lives up to expectations!

Once again, to those of you who take the time to review: I can't thank you enough. You are wonderful, keep it up!!!

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The dark. Darkness was good. It was cool and gentle and quiet. She liked the dark.

The light. Light was bad. It stabbed and burned, it was vicious and cruel. She did not like the light. She hated it.

There were only two people in her world: the light man and the dark man.

"It will be worth it," the man in the light told her, the stilted words a threat spoken in that harsh voice.

"I'm sorry," the man in the darkness crooned, "I'm trying to help; I wish I could make the pain go away."

She liked the dark man. He was kind to her. He held her when fear made her numb; stroked her hair when she hurt all over; talked to her like she understood, even when she no longer could. He was Baal, her comforter in the dark, who was there even when she forgot her own name.

But even he couldn't protect her from the light.

"I can't do anything," he defended himself when she glared reproachfully in his direction.

She never saw him; she hardly saw anything now, only overwhelming bright light or blanketing blackness. He _was_ the dark. His gentle caresses—those frigid fingers, that stone cold chest—were the only evidence that he even had a body.

His fingers were in her hair now. It was the longest it had been in years, though she didn't know that. She couldn't remember anything. But he had just told her that her hair was long enough that the nurse would have to cut it again soon.

"But not yet," he'd murmured, fingering the several-inch-long strands.

She huffed a surprised breath of pain when his hand barely brushed over her temple. Throbbing pain; a knife stabbing the same inch of skin again and again. Sunbursts flashed with each thrust. She cringed and whimpered.

"Sshhhh..."

His cold hands rested on each side of her face. The dark was cold. It leached away the remnants of light-pain. She didn't know if her eyes were open or closed. It made no difference. The cold hands numbed her face and her body became heavy. She took a rattling breath.

_Thank-you for being my friend._

oOo

She was getting worse. Frustrated, he smashed his fist into a tree as he passed. He was a block away before he heard it crash to the ground behind him. Why wasn't the treatment working like it should? Already he had been able to release one of his patients from the asylum, declaring them fully cured of their mental ailments. A man who had had imaginary friends that told him to do dangerous deeds went home to his family and was able to interact with others. He could now spend his remaining years with his children and grandchildren.

Of course, the rest of his patients had only progressed to a stage where they no longer screamed and raged in their rooms, their minds blissfully blank. But not Mary Alice.

He knew he could save her. After a year and a half of treatment, she no longer had visions portending doom and destruction. She also no longer spoke; yet her dark eyes still reflected comprehension, she still whimpered from the temporary pain from each and every treatment, she still struggled to remember her horrifying past. And death still did not cling to her bony ribcage, to seep into his senses and tempt him to feast before it was too late.

What did it mean, that she smelled only of life and endurance? That, despite the delicate state of her failing human body, the death-stench did not stake its claim on her and announce to him when it would take her as its own?

He was on his way to the hospital again, to satiate his thirst. He didn't like to be away from Mary Alice for any length of time, now, but he had let the fire in his throat rage at a dangerous heat. She would be safe from harm—her room was the safest in the entire asylum now.

The hunt was short and barely satisfying. But it was enough to soothe the burning for a few more days. Spending so much time around ill humans had made him accustomed to ignoring the fiery heat of the venom. But the work he did was his way of repaying the deaths that sustained his existence.

Balint followed his own scent back to the asylum, letting his nose guide him through the dark while his mind was on other things. When he reached the tree he had felled earlier that evening, an unfamiliar scent hit him like a musket ball to the face.

His nose flared and his head whipped around, taking in his surroundings. The night noises of the forest screamed in his sensitive ears—birds fluffed their feathers against the cold, a family of squirrels shifted restlessly in their sleep, frogs in a brook a mile away grunted at each other in an echoing round. There was nothing unusual to see or hear. And yet the immortal-sweet stench of another vampire, coming from the west before mingling with his own, assaulted his senses.

He usually avoided the company of his own kind; the eternal aura which hung around vampires offended him. It was the smell of sin. And this was the greediest, the most lustful and gluttonous scent he had ever encountered. The vampire it belonged to took all that it coveted and more from humanity and did nothing to repay his hefty debt.

Balint's stomach twisted and curled. He did not want to meet the being to whom this scent belonged. It wasn't hard to see what had happened—this nomad had been come across his scent in his roaming, noticed how well worn this path was, and followed the trail back...

... to Whitefield.

His legs began to move at double time. The nomad was probably just lonely from a long solitary hunt, and might have moved on without trouble when Balint avoided contact. But he would doubtless find it curious that the trail led back to a mental hospital, possibly curious enough to snoop around the place. And if he did that, he'd certainly be led to the most visited room in the asylum: Mary Alice's cell.

The deep dark of the trees began to lift and Balint curved around toward the left, following the trail left by his visitor. With relief, he noticed that it lead toward the east wing, where his office was. On the opposite side of the hospital to Mary Alice.

An outcrop of oaks reached toward the walls of the east wing, like a green finger straining to stroke the red bricks. From the edge of the trees, Balint could see his office window. The silhouette of a man was a black hole against the dark room.

"This is a rather nice set-up you have here," the shadow commented.

The shadow disappeared from the window, and a man landed in a shallow crouch in front of Balint. He was very average-looking—what passed for ugly amongst vampires—and his voice was mildly polite. But something wild glinted behind his ruby eyes.

"Thank-you," Balint replied, wary.

The sickeningly saccharine scent which meant that he was very well fed rolled off him in waves. The smell was created by the chemical reaction of the venom to blood, which was what gave vampires such great strength. It was a much more efficient way to produce energy than eating food; instantaneous, like photosynthesis in a plant.

"I wonder, would you mind showing me around?"

He took several steps to the south, keeping to the edge of the trees. It was the way Balint had come when he returned to his office before going on the hunt that night. The quickest way to Mary Alice's room. His eyes hardened.

"I do mind, actually," he bit out. "Might I first ask who you are? And what you are doing here?"

The other man smiled mildly, and his teeth flashed briefly in the moonlight. He took another couple of steps, and Balint was forced to move with him to keep him within reaching distance, should the need to restrain him arise.

"I'm sorry, how rude of me not to introduce myself," he held out a hand to Balint, which he shook reluctantly. "I am James. I was on my way to the coast—back to the bigger population, you understand—when I crossed your path."

He was silent for a moment, except for the brush of his feet against the leafy ground. The predatory glint in his eyes shone a little brighter than before as he examined Balint's expression.

"It's not often one finds a vampire who stays in the one area long enough to create such permanent paths. I thought I'd stop to say hello. Introduce myself."

Balint restrained the growl that built in his throat; they were drawing closer to the west wing of the asylum. But he made no effort to force his face into a friendlier expression, either. No other vampires were welcome in his existence—already he felt like the smell of immortality was choking him.

"You have done so," he murmured. "Now I would prefer that you leave this place. I do not appreciate visitors."

James continued to walk at a leisurely pace and Balint was forced to shadow him, until they stopped just outside Mary Alice's window. James looked up at the building, his eyes following the path of Balint's scent to the barred and bolted window. Though it looked secure to human eyes, Balint knew it must be obvious that the bars had been loosened so that he could get easily in and out. James grinned.

"Is this where you bring your victims before you feed, then?" he asked, judging the distance with his eyes. Balint could smell the venom pooling in James' mouth. "What is on the menu tonight? I should very much like to try a..."

Balint attacked, moving to hold him back in his arms, crush him, but James had already sprung toward the wall. He leapt after him, but he knew he was too late—pure desire transformed the plain face into a mask that terrified even Balint, who had seen more than his share of horror. Grabbing hold of the windowsill with only one hand, he shoved James off the building with the all his strength; the bars that the fiend had been gripping came out in his hands, like twisted straws.

A feral growl ripped from James' throat and he tried to jump for the window again, but Balint managed to wrestle him back into the trees, deep enough that they wouldn't disturb the humans. At the last minute, James wrenched himself free from Balint's unrelenting grip and stalked away in the direction he'd been steering him.

His breath came in short bursts, but it took Balint a moment to realise that his breathlessness was not due to shock and anger, but excitement. When he turned, the faint glimmer of danger in James' eye blazed like a furnace in his entire face; his expression was manic.

"Such a scent!" he exclaimed, still breathing feverishly. "How do you resist such a siren call? To drink that sweet elixir would be—"

Balint hissed and closed the distance that had grown between them, staying directly between Mary Alice and the monster who would steal her pecularly enduring life force. James crouched forward defensively, then pulled himself back with a vicious snarl.

But Balint didn't let up; his eyes watched James' every move as he sauntered further into the trees and turned back just before he was out of sight.

"This does not end here," he hissed, and Balint could hear the raw need in his voice. "I have won this game many times before—you will not win, old one."

And when James disappeared into the darkness, Balint did not hesitate. He turned and ran, back to protect Mary Alice from death.

oOo

He would have her.

James paced in the trees, on the very fringes of the forest so that he would not be spotted by a passing human. It was unusually sunny; he could not risk making a move until dark. He paused and looked at the window in the fire red wall, and he imagined he could smell the sweet scent of her blood wafting to him on the gentle breeze.

His throat burned, his entire body ached with the need to taste that divinest of liqueurs. The scent promised to be his one chance, the only blood that could fully quench his constant parching thirst.

That she was guarded by another only made her more desirable. He'd encountered this before—immortals who had formed some peculiar attachment to a human and were adverse to taking their life, content to watch the miserable creature live out it's miserably short life. Pathetic really, but it did make interesting sport for him. And this old one would be easy to defeat; almost not even worth the effort, except for that delectable blood...

He grinned, and a stray beam of sunlight glinted off his teeth. The sun was about to set and it would be dark soon. And in a few short hours, then he would have her all to himself to enjoy.

oOo

Mary Alice had still been traumatized after her last electro-convulsive treatment when he came to her room in the dark hours of the morning, and she had cried out and struggled when he tried to soothe her. After two hours, she was finally asleep for the moment, her hair a dark halo around her pinched face. She was so tiny that it was difficult to believe that she was nineteen years old.

He looked away and stalked silently to the window, a faint hiss of pain escaping through his teeth. Why was life so cruel—hadn't she already been dealt a bad enough hand? To be shunned, never accepted by family or friends her entire life, then suffer so much here in this asylum, only to be ravaged for her blood. Surely fate did not intend to end this young woman's life before she had the chance to live it.

But how else could this predicament end?

A butterfly flitted past the window, within easy reach through the bars. Balint knew that if he touched it, he could stroke its wings without even disturbing the loose pigment which gave it such a vibrant orange hue. He also knew, should he twist his fingers just gently, he could crush the delicate creature into unrecognisable powder.

"What can I do?" he whispered, listening to the fitful rasp of Mary Alice's breath as she slept. "I intended only to lift your burden, give you back the life you deserve to live. But instead I have sealed your doom."

She didn't answer, but there was no need. He knew the question she would surely want the answer to, the only one she ever asked that he had never answered, though she asked it again and again. The perfect recall of his memory pulled her voice out of the dark that still claimed the room in the oncoming dawn.

"_Are you my friend?"_

He winced as the cracked words in his memory stabbed his dead heart; the uncertainty in her voice as she formed the word—_friend... friend... friend—_was a physical force. But he could never answer her when she asked, could never find the words to explain to her why he came to this room night after night and tried so hard to atone for an ill he didn't cause.

"You draw me to you," he said again, desperation in his voice. "I tell myself not to, but I continue to return here, to you."

He could hear her heart and breathing stutter, watched through the pale dark that stymied her eyes as she struggled to sit up. She stared blindly in the direction of his voice, whimpers of pain already beginning again in the back of her throat. He took a deep breath, wondering again at how alive her smell was despite how close her death loomed.

And suddenly, he knew what he had to do.

He darted to her side and her frail fingers clutched at his shirt as he gathered her in his arms familiarly. She was so trusting. Her whimpering had already escalated to a piteous keen, but he couldn't tell if it was her usual pain or if she somehow sensed what he had in store for her.

But what kind of friend would allow her to die at the hands of a sadistic monster intent on murdering her for her blood, when he had the means to spare her?

"And it seems," he told her sadly, "that I am fated to be your friend, at the end."

He would have preferred to do this somewhere more secluded, where he could be sure that his deed would not be discovered. But he knew James would be out there already, prepared to attack at any moment, and this was the only way he could be stopped. If Balint did not act now, it would be too late for her.

She cried out once when he nuzzled his face into her neck and bit down hard, and again on her wrists. It was over in only a few seconds; the longest of his existence. Hands shaking like leaves in a high storm, he slid her out of his lap and cringed at the other end of the room to get away from the delicious warmth she emanated.

Without the taint of death, her blood tasted unnaturally sweet on his tongue. But instead of tempting him to go back and drink, it gave him a sudden insight. This was why the death-stench did not cling to her—she was always destined to become immortal.

The pitch of her keening moan moved up an octave, but she seemed otherwise oblivious to the significant increase of her physical pain as the venom began to spread through her veins. He clearly remembered every second of his tortuous transformation, and he was strangely grateful for all that Mary Alice had already suffered, preparing her for this moment.

Eventually, he moved back to her bed, pulling her into his cold embrace as she continued to writhe in blistering agony. He would not be able to keep her here for the whole three or four days it would take for the venom to completely sear through her body, but he hoped that tonight she would be far enough along to be safe from James. He would guard her until the safe darkness of night returned and then he would take her and run somewhere far away, where she would be safe from harm and could not unintentionally hurt another.

oOo

When the sun finally set, Balint carefully stood from the bed and paced toward the window. He'd been with Mary Alice all day—he told the nurses that she had fallen unexpectedly ill and he would see no other patients today—on the off chance that James would risk exposure to the sun. That would be all he needed right now, to get the Volturi mixed up in this mess. In the falling dark, he searched the grounds for a sign of James' approach.

The faintest vibration in the trees below told him that James was just outside, and waiting for a sign of weakness. He gathered a struggling Mary Alice in his arms securely and for a moment he wished he had something nice for her to put on when she woke up. The inadequate warmth of her thin grey shift wouldn't matter soon, but it was a pity that she would have to see the holes around her name which she'd gnawed while she suffered in this hell hole.

She cried out in a random expression of the agony he was sure raged inside. He hoped, with sudden vehemence, that she wouldn't remember anything about it when she awoke to her new life—if anyone deserved to start afresh, she did.

It was time. He gripped her tightly, aware of her every bone and sinew, and moved to the window. With a swift strike of his foot, the bars clattered out of their loose stone holdings and he heard the stifled gasp of anticipation from the trees to the right.

Balint had endured through centuries. He was getting old, even by vampire standards, and had many lifetimes' worth of knowledge and skill. But he was not a fighter—had never been—and he knew that if it came to a physical confrontation it was highly unlikely that he would win. He had no doubt that James had outwitted many vampires with much greater defences than he.

But he would certainly give this young upstart a run for his money. He leapt from the window and landed easily four hundred feet into the forest, not even pausing to get his bearings before he was weaving through the trees at an incredible speed. He would find a safe place to hide her, where she would be undisturbed while the venom finished healing and perfecting her tiny body, and then he would face whatever consequences James had in store for him.

He wasn't afraid of what might happen to him. It mattered only that Mary Alice escaped unscathed. That she would live. Already she had begun to smell unbearably sweet.

oOo

Light. She was in agony, and she screamed for it to stop. It burned! But when the lightening was gone it still hurt. Everywhere. Bright light. Pain. _Stop!_

Dark. It was cool and silent. Cold hands stroked though her hair. She still hurt everywhere. Random flashes behind her eyelids made her quiver and shout.

Soon she was alone.

Light flashed. Disappeared. Light. And gone again. Dark.

The hands came back. Cold. Flashing light paused. She slept. Oblivion. His voice was smooth and dark and made her calm. Dark. Cold. Pain....

Heat.

Still dark, but invisible light burned. First her neck. Then her wrists. It burned. Hot dark. But cold fingers returned. Fire within. Ice without. Both burning.

Darker. Hotter.

She had no more screams. She tried anyway. Heat. Dark. Pain. Cold.

Wind. Flying... to heaven? It was cool. But dark. And fire still burned inside.

Still again. But agony. She screamed. It did not hide the loud cracks and screeches. Or the shout, whispered in her ear.

"—Alice."


	11. Chapter 10: Awakening

**A/N - **And here it is, my friends. The next chapter is ready for you to read! And just in time for the end of school holidays (here anyway). Though I still have at least another month to go. I've been stewing for at least an hour over whether I should leave off where I have or keep going for a bit longer, but it just felt too forced to keep going without a little breather. I hope you don't mind :D

I didn't get very many reviews last chapter (a little disappointing, but it happens) which makes me think that I'm not the only one who doesn't get update alerts from ffnet any more. I appreciate everyone's reviews SO MUCH. No matter how many times you've told me you like (or don't like) my story, I love, love, LOVE hearing from you. So please review. It makes both of us feel so much happier!

Also, I've changed up the style a little bit in this one, which is something that I've been intending from the very beginning. I hope it works the way I wanted it to--let me know what you think. Enjoy!

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He crouched in the shadows, his back to the dark as he watched at the man staring into a small fire. Waiting. She had finally left the small circle of light—gone to check up on her latest army of newborns, she said—and now would be their only chance to talk. He could smell the newborns on the breeze that blew in from the west, combined with the smell of the camp fire and _her,_ and he wondered briefly who was now charged with the task of babysitting the rabid fledglings.

The man by the fire didn't move. His face was etched into deep lines of melancholy by the flickering of light and shadow. This might be his only opportunity, but fear prevented him from revealing himself. He had no desire to return to this existence that held only malice and violence.

"I know you are there," the man by the fire said softly, without even turning. "Come out and face me; I won't attack you unless I must."

"Hello, old friend."

Abruptly, the man by the fire spun to face the black night.

"Peter," he whispered, whipping his head back to the path _she _took moments ago. "If Maria realises you have returned, I will not be able to spare you. What madness possessed you to—"

Peter cut him off by squaring his shoulders and stepping into the edge of the light; dim red sparks reflected off his smooth skin. He felt an unexpected tremor of curiosity... and fear.

"I am not unaware of the risks," Peter assured his friend, also glancing toward the trees on the opposite side of the fire. "But I came for you."

Peter felt his inexplicable fear increase as his friend clapped a fire-warmed hand on his shoulder. It appeared that neither of them wanted him to be around when Maria returned.

"Peter, if you and Charlotte have ideas of overthrowing Maria with my help, I would advise you against it," he said, his eyes still worried. "Though I would have no qualms with fighting against her, it would not be tactically sound. She is very strong, and I suspect she no longer trusts me as she did before you left."

Peter shook his head fiercely. There wasn't much time left, he had to make him come or disappear now.

"No, you don't understand," Peter disagreed, glancing around again. "Charlotte and I travelled far north, and we have discovered a different way of living."

The confusion on his friend's face was palpable. It had always been this way with him, though Peter remembered often wondering if he even realised the influence he had on others.

"In the northern states, our kind do not fight," he explained. "Charlotte and I have met with many others like us, and for the duration of our wandering have not yet had to fight."

Briefly, Peter felt once again the keen surprise from that first meeting, when he and Charlotte had first discovered that such an existence was possible. A life without the unnecessary violence, where the blood was free for the taking and other covens were not automatically enemies to be fought. As Peter explained this new life, he watched his friend's eyes light with that same wonder he so intensely remembered feeling.

"Take me back with you," he demanded, stooping to retrieve a battered pack—the ageing remains of his human identity in which he carried his few possessions. Peter grinned at his eagerness and took a step back into the darkness.

"I knew you would come," Peter told him. "Though it took me a long while to convince Charlotte that it would be safe."

He followed without hesitation and Peter frowned cautiously.

"Do you not want to say goodbye to Maria?"

His friend shook his head and started into a loping run, which Peter hurried to match, following his scent back the way he'd come. He was grinning from ear to ear, and Peter thought he could feel the relief of his friend's escape swell his own heart. Clouds skittered across the full moon so that the dark of the night deepened, almost as though the fates had decided to help camouflage their route.

"As I said," he eventually answered, picking up the pace. "Maria has not trusted me as much since I allowed you and Charlotte to escape. I believe she has been entertaining thoughts of ridding herself of me before I turn on her, and therefore I have been forced to contemplate a similar course of action—though with more reservations, I imagine." He laughed bitterly, then shook away the obviously morbid thoughts.

"Still, I'm sure neither of us will mourn my desertion."

oOo

_His face—cold, pale and hauntingly beautiful—gazes up at the stars, his expression serene. My heart breaks with yearning._

"_Jasper?" an unseen musical voice—_my voice?—_whispers, and his eyes are suddenly visible. Soulful golden eyes. He already knows; those eyes can see everything. "I love you."_

_Stars sparkle to life in those eyes. There is a whole universe of them, swirling around, dancing with light. I already know too, but I wait breathlessly._

"_I love you too, Alice."_

I opened my eyes and the purple tones of a starry night were instantly replaced by earthy browns and greens. Tiny rainbows sparkled off the leafy loam right in front of my eyes and the sight was hypnotising—white fragmented into pink, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet... and another colour I had no name for. But it was just as beautiful and vibrant and... shiny at the rest.

As I stared at the dancing lights, I caught sight of the tiny veins in the decomposing leaves—skeletons of their once flawless shape—and my eyes followed the lines, like little rivers, till I was distracted by the cracks and grooves in the bark of a tree ten feet away.

I sat up.

A dense forest of sights and sounds and smells swirled around me, but it was surprisingly easy to take note of and dwell on each and everyone. My throat burned with a dry ache that felt both foreign and familiar. Swallowing the pooling saliva didn't seem to help, but I was distracted by my surroundings before I could think much of it.

I sat in the middle of the forest, in a small clearing encircled by trees that towered like attentive guards. The muskiness of dirt and greenery filled my nostrils, yet I still noticed the faintest hint of salt on the breeze which made me think of blue waves of water crashing against a rocky shore. The tree branches tapped and rubbed against each other in a steady beat, under which I could also hear the scurrying of small animals and the flap of birds' wings. I watched as an eagle alighted on the very top bough of the tallest tree and swivelled its eye around to check for potential prey.

I could see every detail on the beautiful creature so clearly—the shallow grooves in its beak, the darker edges on the sleek brown feathers, and the minute movements of its claws as it anchored itself to the swaying tree top—that I felt it was close enough to touch. But as I reached out to try, my focus instantly shifted again. The rainbow lights that had mesmerised me—was it really only a few seconds ago?—were the reflection of the clear sunlight off my own skin.

Entranced, I twisted my hand around and the lights flashed and sparkled in response. I traced my other hand up my arm to find the shining facets that I couldn't see through the glare, but the skin was smooth as silk. I flipped my legs out from under me so that I could examine them and they were similarly scintillating all the way up to the edge of dirty grey material that rested just above my knees.

The material was so thin that I hadn't even realised I was wearing anything, though now that I'd looked I also noticed that there were scraps of the simple shift littering the ground in a rough circle around where I had been laying. Chunks had been ripped out of the arms and neck of the pitiful garment so that it was held up by only a few strands.

How did that happen?

As I examined the scattered rags of my only piece of clothing—trying to remember what happened, but coming up only with an increased dry ache in my mouth—I noticed a larger scrap with black stitching that stood out against the dull grey. I picked it up and turned it around in my hands several times before I realised what the stitching meant. It was incredibly difficult to keep my mind on one track of thought for very long, but I eventually recognised it as a single word.

Alice.

The word stirred some feeling of familiarity inside of me, and I suddenly remembered the very different scene that had greeted me before I opened my eyes to the clearing.

"_I love you too, Alice."_

The man with the golden eyes appeared to have been talking to me... could this be my name? I was startled to realise that I couldn't remember. I looked around the clearing again, looking for something—anything—that would give me some clues to answer the questions that now filled my head. Where was I? _Who_ was I? How did I get here? Was I all alone? Why couldn't I remember anything?

But there was nothing but trees, ferns and decaying leaves. And that burning itch.

I looked down at the scrap of material cradled in my hands and rolled the word around in my mind. Alice... Alice, _Alice_. Could this really be my name? The evidence certainly suggested so, and it did feel vaguely familiar—like catching the scent of a flower on the breeze but not being quite sure if it's the one you think it is.

Perhaps my name had been erased from my memory as well as everything else about myself. It didn't really matter, I supposed. A name was just a name—a way of identifying oneself—and Alice was as good a name as I could think of. In fact, I thought it quite suited me.

_Another man with gold eyes and fair hair holds out his hand to me, which I shake eagerly. He isn't quite as big as Jasper, but he also towers over me. His face is warm but cautious as he smiles._

"_It's a pleasure to meet you Alice," he greets. "My name is Carlisle Cullen...."_

I blinked my eyes rapidly as the picture dissolved and I was back in the tiny clearing in the middle of the forest again. Confused, I turned to search behind me and my nostrils flared as I tried to catch the scent of the golden-eyed stranger called Carlisle Cullen, and I suddenly found myself on my feet—it barely occurred to me that I could run from danger more easily if I were standing and I was already in a defensive crouch.

But apart from the squirrel which was chattering nervously in its knot in a tree at the edge of my clearing, I was utterly alone.

As I swept my eyes around the clearing again, I realised that I would have to get out of the forest to find answers. _Tree branches whip my face and arms. I stand on jagged-looking rocks but they are soft as moss beneath my feet. And the wind—the slipstream of my passage tugs my hair on end and threatens to tear away the rags which cover my body. _

_I catch sight of a strange cloud of purple rising to the sky ahead of me and I run faster, curious. But, as I draw closer, the wind turns from behind me to blow into my face and I gag._

Frozen with my head facing west I suddenly blinked and shuddered. I could see the first tendrils of purple smoke above the trees at least a mile away, and though I wasn't entirely sure why I was afraid of what that smoke meant, I instinctively took a step in the opposite direction.

_Trees. For miles and miles. Just the soft brush of feathers against my pumping body, the trembling fear of creatures that flee me and the tantalising smell of salt. The trees are beginning to clear ahead..._

No fear this time. I leapt into action, my body reacting as soon as I had the desire to run. And it was wonderful. The bunch and pull of my muscles was smooth and flawless—easy. For some reason, I expected my breathing to grow laboured, but instead I found that I could even hold my breath and it did not affect me. But I resumed the expand and release of my lungs after only a few minutes—without my sense of smell the picture of the forest around me felt uncomfortably incomplete and it was harder to concentrate on something other than how painfully dry my throat felt.

Curious to discover what else I was capable of, I pushed my legs faster until I could actually feel the tug of the wind. Despite my speed, I could see every little detail as clearly as when I was still. _Too clearly_, a flickering instinct told me, _too fast_. But I didn't understand why I felt that way; I had no memory of it being any other way.

After what felt like only moments, I smelled salt on the air and I noticed that the trees were beginning to thin. There was gritty sand blended with the dirt now and as bigger spaces opened between the trees, I heard a roaring crash that sounded as familiar as...

"Home," I murmured, after searching my mind for the right word.

The sound of my voice distracted me for a brief moment—it was high and clear, sounded much different than what I could hear in my mind as I thought—until I stepped out from the shade of the trees and onto a high cliff.

I was disappointed to notice that my skin no longer sparkled and shone as it had in the clearing. Now it appeared deceptively plain in its smooth whiteness. My mind instantly assessed the differences in the situations, and I realised that the sun was completely obscured by the clouds. A lone seagull wailed as it rode the wind far out over the roiling sea, a clear white shape against the thickening grey. _A flash of bright lightening splits the sky, erupting into pelting rain as thunder rolls around the air in answer._

I scowled at the clouds for stealing away the pretty display of the light on my skin, but then I shrugged and continued searching my surroundings. I still had no idea where I was—and still had so many other questions that needed answers.

To my left the sheer face of the cliff continued for another mile before it ended abruptly in a steep rock fall to join with the sandy shore below. _Nothing but beach that way._ To my right the open ground sloped down gradually, following the retreating cliff around the trees I had just left until I could no longer see.

I ran around the sharp corner and followed the natural path. The cliff jutted out again and I followed it around another stand of trees, sand and dust puffing up slightly from each footfall until I stopped.

Below me, there were houses. Several long jetties ran out into the water where boats were moored and as I drew closer I could see people moving about the place—rolling barrels up gangplanks, hauling heavy crates on broad shoulders, bustling around horses and carts and running children in the streets. I felt my lips twitch up into a wide grin and I flew down the path now, eager to go down and talk to them.

_Red horror spurts in my face, covers my hands..._as the dryness in my throat spread through my entire body for a moment, I shook my head. People meant answers: someone could tell me where I was, maybe even who I was and what I was doing out in the middle of nowhere. I wouldn't be alone any more.

As I rounded another bend in the sloping cliff path, I suddenly slowed. A small cabin stood in a sweet garden of wild flowers behind a log fence fifty feet in front of me. There was a woman in the garden, her back turned as she took down crisp white linen from a washing line; she hadn't seen me yet. Embarrassment flashed through me as I watched the wind come off the sea behind me to ruffle her heavy skirts and long-sleeved blouse buttoned at the neck and wrists, then looked down the filthy rag which barely covered me. What would she think when she saw me?

I ducked into the trees in shame. The sheets on the line snapped in the westerly wind as she finished folding the neat square of material and dropped it on top of the clothes already piled in a basket at her feet. She moved slowly, I thought, considering the storm that was brewing above. Perhaps I could quickly run into the yard and pull out a dress before she noticed. Once I was better dressed, I could come out of the trees and continue down the path as though I belonged.

Crouching slightly, so that she wouldn't see me, I wove between the trees until I came to the edge of the smooth lawn. As I nimbly climbed over the short log barrier, preparing myself to run, snatch and flee, the wind eddied around the yard and into my face. The dry ache in my throat flared until I was consumed by a horribly familiar burn; I would do anything to quench the fire which ripped through my veins.

My mind shut down—I leapt.

I didn't think as I curled one hand around the mouth—the warmth made my head spin—and forced the head back with a barely audible snap that made me giddy with anticipation. The feeble struggles stopped, but the heart continued to pound frantically so I hardly noticed. Instinctively, I slashed away the thin material at the woman's neck, my fingernails tearing just as easily through the skin. For one hundredth of a second I paused as the red spurted in my face, covered my hands, before the divine scent overpowered me. My teeth sunk into the warm flesh like it was butter, and then...

Bliss. I gulped at the hot liquid, shut my eyes and groaned with pleasure as it soothed the itchy flames. With each pump of the heart my mouth filled with more of the divine juice and when the heart failed after a few moments I continued to pull with my lips, straining to draw out every last drop. Too soon, it was all gone and I growled, shoving the body away from me.

As I stood, my body swirling with beautiful warmth and the burn in my throat now no more than a niggling itch, my mind started to catch up with the rest of me. When had I closed my eyes? I opened them and looked for a long second at the scene before me before I staggered back in horror.

The woman sprawled at my feet, her hair still neatly twisted into a casual bun at the top of her head, her jaw slack and her glassy eyes staring up at me, wide with terror. Her simple blouse was still perfect and white except for the bloody mess of threads and flesh at her neck, and the single hand print—tiny, like that of a monstrous child—which stood out in stark relief against the white lace over her heart.

I moved to cover my face with my hands, the blood still smeared across the pale skin like finger paint. I knew, without having to check, that my hand would fit that print perfectly. Yet, even as the horrifying truth began to sink through all of the tiny details that clouded my mind, I couldn't help but relent to the smell and lick away each smudge.

No...

Two more scurrying steps back before I was frozen in place again. _The world turns fuzzy, not as sharp as I've grown used to now. A small boy barrels up the garden path and through the heavy door._

"_Mamma, Mamma," he calls, his glee wild on his five-year-old face. "Pappa taked me to the store and brought me a horsey. He says iffins I is good, he will brought me a cowboy soon."_

_He glances around the comfortable cabin, peeking first into the kitchen, then carefully into his parents' bedroom and frowns when his father finally walks through the door._

"_Where's Mamma?"_

"_She must be in the back garden, son," the father sighs wearily, sinking into a worn arm chair. "Today is washing day, remember?"_

_The little boy nods, his face brighter already, and races out the back door. But as he skids to a halt at the sight of his mother, her torn throat, blood spattered across her face and a bloody hand print branded across her chest, he drops his new horse and lets loose a soul-shattering scream._

"_Mamma!"_

"No!"

I darted forward, grabbing blindly at the evidence of my monstrosity and tore it out of her shirt, scattering the pieces. Then, my mouth filling with liquid fire at the lingering scent of the woman's blood, I spun around and flee. Faster even than when I was testing the strength of my body, I tumbled through the trees, not even trying to steer myself out of the way of the heavy branches and fallen logs.

But, try as I might, I couldn't run away from what I had become.


	12. Chapter 11: Progress

**A/N -** Hey everywho! I'm really sorry I kinda fell off the edge of the map lately, I've been uber distracted by uni and adventures. How excited for this update are you? "Lemme hear y'all say 'hey-o!'"

So, this chapter was a little difficult to write, hense the long wait. I planned on the last chapter being the only one about her first day as a vampire, but there's just so much about being a newborn that I wanted to capture that it's run into two now. I'm open to any constructive criticism: tell me if you think any of Alice's actions feel unnatural or forced. Is she thinking too clearly for a day old vampire?

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What had I done? I pushed my pumping legs as hard as I could manage, crashing blindly through the ever thicker tangle of branches, avoiding the wandering deer-path. The sharp thorns were the feeble scrape of feathered hands against my hard skin; I thrashed against the woody vines wildly, wishing they would inflict the kind of slashing pain that I expected. Hoping it would banish the stabbing in my chest.

Already my throat was burning again, searing ever hotter as I reluctantly remembered—again and again—the temporary soothe of the woman's blood against the hot itch. But the little boy's screams echoed in my head and had me clawing at my throat as I ran. I tried desperately to scratch out the monstrous flames. _What's wrong with me?_

I sensed a clearing ahead; I could smell moist sunlight; hear a gurgle which brought to mind flowing water.

Stepping out into the sunlight, a small part of me recoiled in disgust—_monster! alien!—_even as I delighted again in the pretty glitter of my skin. The reflection of my face in a relatively still pool, a branch of the brook running through the middle of the clearing, froze me in place for a full minute.

Red.

Dark clouds eclipsed the sun once more and I could see more clearly past the shimmering glare.

My eyes were red. They stared back at me, unblinking, until I was blind to the rest of my face. All I could see were the two black pupils surrounded by the most hideous shade of crimson I could ever imagine. The colour of fresh blood.

The burning thirst flared and I dived for the bubbling water, scooping it into my hands and splashing it into my desiccated mouth. I had to douse the flames. The memory of how smooth the woman's blood had felt in my mouth hit me again, but I resolutely threw down more water. My throat constricted against the foul taste—_I choke the water back up and it burns on its way out, feeding the flames—_but I forced myself to swallow. It came back up after only a few moments, just as I knew it would.

"No!"

I braced my hands on the silt and pebbles at the edge of the pool, my entire body shaking. Crying, I realised with shock, I am crying. Water, which had splashed up onto my face, dribbled down my cheeks and dripped off my chin to rejoin the brook. This felt right, somehow, though I couldn't fathom why.

After an age, I managed to stifle the endless sobs and force my lungs to take up a steady rhythm. Breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, breathe out... until the air sounded smooth and I no longer had to make a conscious effort. I still couldn't drag my eyes away from their reflection in the water, but now that the initial shock of horror was gone I could contemplate them.

What had I expected to see when I saw my reflection? The men I had seen in my visions had golden eyes and the woman—I shuddered that I could remember her every terrified feature so clearly—had eyes the colour of the sea... but was it natural to be shocked when I realised that mine were different? Light caught on the water, making the reflected red glint horribly and my thoughts derailed. A microscopic bug balanced in the circle of red, its feet creating new dents in the water's surface that fractured into disgusting blood-drop eyes...

No, I had to focus. I wanted to understand—I _needed_ to know what was happening to me. And, somehow, I knew that this was significant. Just like I knew that eyes could be a variety of shades. Then why was it so horrifying to find that mine were red?

_Unnatural_, a distant voice replied, _monstrous, evil, soulless, cursed..._ I flinched and snapped my eyes shut, burying my face in my almost-bare shoulder. That didn't make sense; there was no reason to think that. The colour of my eyes didn't determine if I was good or evil.

"_It is ultimately up to us, what we choose to do with the hand that has been dealt to us," Carlisle Cullen agrees, his voice deep with sympathy, "whether to use it for good or evil. It is a concept many of our kind, unfortunately, fail to appreciate." And I nod, a satisfied smirk pulling at my lips..._

My head snapped up to look for the man, but I was not surprised to find myself alone again. Carlisle Cullen's face hung in my mind, and I searched it with my inner eye. Our kind? Whatever did he mean? I compared his face to Jasper's and realised that it was not just their eyes that were so alike—the pale skin, the glint of hard muscles beneath it, the straight white teeth... and a perfection, which I couldn't explain, which shined from their every feature.

Tentatively, I leaned back over the pool and tried hard to ignore my ghastly eyes as I studied the rest of my face. My skin was also pale and perfect, formed into the tiny face of a magical thing—a thin aquiline nose framed by high rounded cheekbones, lips like cupid's rose bow which were pursed into a pretty pout, and a pointed chin which slipped elegantly into a ballerina neck. It was the face of a fairy, a demonic child. Curiously, I didn't feel as young as I looked; I felt eternal.

Valiantly ignoring that promising train of thought, I pushed myself to finish the first. I placed that woman's face next to my own in my mind, and saw it; the difference between our faces and hers. My throat flashed white hot as I watched, in my memory, the red liquid pulsing through invisible capillaries just behind the thin membrane of her delicate skin. Blood. She had blood, and we wanted it. I wanted it.

_No_.

I scrambled back from the water's edge into a tree, which splintered and cracked toward the ground before coming to a shattering halt, caught by one of its neighbours. I really was a monster—and if we were the same kind then Carlisle and Jasper were too... or not. What if it was just me? and these men in my head were just that: creations of my twisted monster mind.

_Flashes, a mumbled mess of sights and sounds, smells and sensations, and then an image pauses._

_The two of us, Jasper and I, crouch behind a low brick wall. He grimaces as the scent draws nearer, but I grin—I'll be more than happy to take the male too if he's so insistent in his guilt..._

I baulked away from the implication, the thought within the thought—of the moment I would fix my mouth around the throat of the approaching man—and I screamed at the repulsion and greedy anticipation that mixed in my stomach. I needed that blood, I didn't want to kill that man. I screamed it into the dirt.

"_... what we choose to do with the hand that has been dealt to us," Carlisle's voice echoes_—the memory and the repeated vision slid in and out of focus with one another, though it was strange that I could even tell the difference—_"whether we use it for good or evil..."_

_More flashes; red slowly fades to gold..._

"_You're real," I whisper, tracing his face, twisted as it is in loathing. "And that's all that matters to me."_

_He snorts and tries to look away, but I kiss his orange eyes closed._

"_Will you come and try again?"_

The thought within the thought was more peaceful this time; my body tingled cold with rejection but my heart began to sing. _Loping through the forest, I follow the earthy scent, my reactions animal sharp only because I have forced it to accept the control of my conscience. But I am glad; mine is no longer the frenzied need of a monster. I am in control as I land on the jowl of a bear. And I am satisfied._

Animals. I could hear them all around me in the woods; the thip-thap of the little ones' hearts was only whitenoise, but the bass thumping of the something larger was strong enough to set my throat blazing with the sunset. It smelled little better than the water, so weak against the memory of that woman, but my mouth blistered and burned hotter with every passing second.

I was suddenly on my feet. Though I appeared smooth and controlled, every movement jarred in some distant section of my mind I couldn't quite ignore. I felt awkward in my own body, especially when I realised what I was about to do. With the woman I had acted on pure instinct; there was no time to think because I didn't know what I wanted until my body had acted to get it. Now, I was setting out to deliberately stalk a living creature. One which most definitely didn't smell edible.

But the picture of the bear in my head was curiously peaceful, so I closed my eyes and concentrated. The rolling heartbeat jumped in time with the echo of a pulse in my stomach. I took a deep breath and separated the smell attached to the sound: rich and earthy but laced with something sharp, like cat piss.

With a little persuasion, I coaxed my body into the same prowling crouch as before and, eyes still closed, followed the scent and sound further into the forest. The creature's scent clung to the dead leaves and branches it had touched as it moved through the undergrowth, perhaps stalking its own prey, and I could almost see the trail through my eyelids, the smell was so strong.

I moved like a ghost—silent and swift—despite the dry bushes and leafy floor, my movements weren't even as loud as the rustle of the breeze. When the creature's heart beat so loud in my ears that it drowned out all else, I paused and opened my eyes.

It took less than a second to spot the source of the smell and the sound. Large and leonine, it stretched out on a sturdy branch in a nearby tree with its attention firmly concentrated on the ground. Distracted: easy prey.

I didn't give myself anymore time to analyse the situation. With this insatiable thirst, it was only the unnaturalness of forcing myself to stalk such an unappealing smell that gave my thoughts any power over my body, and with the wet squeeze and rush of blood so loud and close, I lost even that little control in less than a second. My parched body took over again and I leapt.

It wasn't much of a struggle. Though the creature had much stronger instincts than the woman, its yowling fight for survival was just as fruitless. Its claws tore off the remainder of my grey rags, but screeched harmlessly against my rock-hard skin, as I jerked it into my arms and bit with ravenous accuracy into the great, throbbing vein at its neck. It went instantly limp—I vaguely felt the crunch of its bones through the delicious warmth of its body—and I took greedy pulls at the heat that pumped into my mouth.

The taste was off, but not bad enough to make me stop. It was hot and thick, and it took the edge off the burn as it slid down my throat. There was more to be had in this body than the first, and I continued to gulp for twice as long after the heart faltered. But, eventually, the blood had all passed through my lips and I tossed these remains away too.

As I came to my senses again, I examined the empty body. It had tawny fur, with one-shade-darker spots, and black tips on the ears and triangle nose. With slitted yellow eyes, dead flat and open, it stared at me over its still-bristled whiskers in open hostility. Panther: that was the name my mind instantly supplied, though I had no idea how I could possibly know. It did explain the bitter aftertaste of cat on the back of my tongue, though.

I continued to stare at my latest meal as I took stock of my body. I was almost warm now and I could actually feel the new blood seeping through my muscles, feel the weight of it swirl around whenever I moved. But my throat still itched and smouldered, nothing like before but enough that I growled sharply through my gritted teeth in frustration.

That pulled me up short. The surrounding trees and low boiling clouds bounced the sound back at me until I could hear my angry snarl from a hundred different directions. It was the same sound the panther had made as it attacked me. If I didn't know that it came from my own lips, I would have assumed it belonged to one of my dead meal's relatives. Curious, I tried other sounds.

A bird was singing goodnight in the distance, and I copied its lilting notes. It paused to listen to me and then I heard the whir of its wings as it lifted off to find me, what it supposed to be a new friend. _The bird swoops closer with my every whistle, trilling back sometimes when I pause too long. But when it discovers me, instinctively fearing what I am, it turns its tail and flees._ I stopped my call and it landed in a tree a yard away from me. I shook off the sudden sadness that came with knowing that the bird would abandon me as soon as it came close, and amused myself by watching it hop back and forth, searching. It called out again and I grinned, remembering another bird I'd watched for a while this morning. I ripped out the eagle's warning screech and the little bird jumped into the air with terror, flapping frantically away on trembling wings.

I collapsed into giggles.

It wasn't funny, really, but my emotions at that moment would only allow for laughter or crying. And I'd already found out once today how unsatisfying it was to cry. Laughter didn't feel so wrong or incomplete; my voice bubbled over itself as it escaped my mouth, carrying with it the sense of uselessness that had been building in my chest all day. It felt good.

_Jasper hunkers down in a dark corner, clenching his fists tight against his temples. A man—_another monster—_with tightly curled brown hair approaches carefully, one hand outstretched. Jasper looks up to reveal red-black eyes._

"_You don't need to be scared of me, Peter," he mutters, his voice pained. "I won't hurt you or Charlotte. It's myself I can't stand..."_

When his tortured face faded away, I found myself in the same position as the man named Peter, reaching out to Jasper as though to pull him out of some deep hole. The feeling of uselessness returned in a flood. I choked on my need to express the sudden grief, but I knew crying only made it worse, gave no release. I pulled my outstretched hand back in to my constricted chest. My emotions were so confusing: one second, so peaceful, and the next I felt as though I were being torn apart. About to give in and try to hack out the misery with useless sobs, I heard the faint flutter of the little bird returning. Perhaps to see if the eagle had captured its phantom friend?

"Haha..." the noise started small, in some tiny bubble latched onto the edge of the sadness, but grew until the entire forest rang with peals of laughter. The bird flew away again in fright. My ragged shift lay in tatters at my feet. The overloaded clouds opened up to dump water on me. The remaining gore spattered across my white skin was replaced by thick black mud. My throat began to burn hotter again.

"_Why do you do that?" Jasper asks, his brows scrunched in consternation. "You're feeling so miserable, and then suddenly you're incapacitated by laughter. It makes my head spin."_

_I stifle my giggles and cradle his face in my hands. They look so tiny, inadequate; but I continue to smile. "Everything is just easier that way."_

And I laughed again.


End file.
